The
tears, too, she let dry unneeded upon her eyelashes and her cheeks;
the mist with which for a time they obscured her vision was nothing
amid that cloud of misery which blackened about her spirit as she
brooded. The access of self-pity was followed, as always, by a
persistent sense of intolerable wrong, and that again by a fierce
desire to plunge herself into ruin, as though by such act she could
satiate her instincts of defiance. It is a phase of exasperated egotism
common enough in original natures frustrated by circumstance--never
so pronounced as in those who suffer from the social disease. Such
mood perverts everything to cause of bitterness. The very force of
sincerity, which Clara could not but recognise in Kirkwood's appeal,
inflamed the resentment she nourished against him; she felt that to
yield would be salvation and happiness, yet yield she might not, and
upon him she visited the anger due to the evil impulses in her own
heart. He spoke of her father, and in so doing struck the only nerve
in her which conveyed an emotion of tenderness; instantly the feeling
begot self-reproach, and of self-reproach was born as quickly the
harsh self-justification with which her pride ever answered blame.
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