He cleared three yards
and fifteen daisies at a leap, out of mere bodily levity;
but when he came within a yard or two of the open parlour windows,
his flying feet fell in their old manner like lead;
he twisted round and came back slowly, whistling. The events
of that enchanted evening were not at an end.
Inside the dark sitting-room of which Moon had caught a glimpse a curious
thing had happened, almost an instant after the intemperate exit
of Rosamund. It was something which, occurring in that obscure parlour,
seemed to Arthur Inglewood like heaven and earth turning head over heels,
the sea being the ceiling and the stars the floor. No words can express
how it astonished him, as it astonishes all simple men when it happens.
Yet the stiffest female stoicism seems separated from it only by a sheet of
paper or a sheet of steel. It indicates no surrender, far less any sympathy.
The most rigid and ruthless woman can begin to cry, just as the most
effeminate man can grow a beard. It is a separate sexual power,
and proves nothing one way or the other about force of character.
But to young men ignorant of women, like Arthur Inglewood, to see Diana Duke
crying was like seeing a motor-car shedding tears of petrol.
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