" There he laughed comfortably. "Poor
Rita! If she only knew, how cut up she'd be!"
He might not have been so absolutely certain of her ignorance
could he have looked into the Severances' drawing-room just then.
For Margaret, after a burst of hysterical gayety, had gone to the
far end of the room on the pretext of arranging some flowers. And
there, with her face securely hid from the half-dozen round the
distant tea-table, she was choking back the sobs, was muttering:
"I'll have to do it! I'm a desperate woman--desperate!"
CHAPTER VI
MR. CRAIG IN SWEET DANGER
It is a rash enterprise to open wide to the world the private
doors of the family, to expose intimate interiors all unconscious
of outside observation, and all unprepared for it. Such frankness
tends to destroy "sympathetic interest," to make delusion and
illusion impossible; it gives cynicism and his brother,
pharisaism, their opportunity to simper and to sneer. Still rasher
is it to fling wide the doors of a human heart, and, without any
clever arrangement of lights and shades, reveal in the full face
of the sun exactly what goes on there. We lie to others
unconsciously; we lie to ourselves both consciously and
unconsciously.
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