She hated with an incredible and insane ferocity. In the
seclusion of her tent, crouched on her bed, silent, locked, motionless, she
yet was the embodiment of all terrible strife and storm in nature. Her
heart was a maelstrom and would have whirled and sucked down to hell all
the beings that were men. Her soul was a bottomless gulf, filled with the
gales and the fires of jealousy, superhuman to destroy.
That fury consumed all her remaining strength, and from the relapse she
sank to sleep.
Morning brought the inevitable reaction. However long her other struggles,
this monumental and final one would be brief. She realized that, yet was
unable to understand how it could be possible, unless shock or death or
mental aberration ended the fight. An eternity of emotion lay back between
this awakening of intelligence and the hour of her fall into the clutches
of primitive passion.
That morning she faced herself in the mirror and asked, "Now--what do I owe
you?" It was not her voice that answered. It was beyond her. But it said:
"Go on! You are cut adrift. You are alone. You owe none but yourself! . . .
Go on! Not backward--not to the depths--but up--upward!"
She shuddered at such a decree.
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