Moths by Ouida — page 170: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

166 MOTHS. “That is not in your usual good taste,” said her husband, find- ing that the painting ill agreed with the decorations of the room. | Vere looked at him, and answered, ‘‘It suits any one of my rooms.” He did not think enough of the matter to understand; the picts ure hung there amidst the silver Cupids and the embroidered epple-blossoms of the wall. i ‘¢ A painful picture, a horrible picture, like all of Gerome’s,” said her mother before it once. A very cold smile came on Vere’s mouth. ‘‘Yos,” she said, simply; ‘‘ we have no degradation like that in Europe, have we?” Lady Dolly colored, turned away, and asked if Fantin had de- signed those charming wreaths of apple-blossoms and Amorini, | But it was very seldom that the bitterness and scorn and shame that were in her found any such expression as in the pur- chase of the ‘‘Slave for the Harem.” She was almost always uite tranquil and very patient under the heavy burden of her ays. all the bitterness and humiliation of her heart she choked down into silence, and she continued to live as she had done hitherto, without sympathy and in an utter mental isolation. She felt that all she had been taught to respect was ridiculous in the eyes of those who surrounded her; she saw that all she had been accustomed to hold in horror as sin made subject for jest and for intrigue; she saw that all around her, whilst too polite to deride the belief and the principles that guided her, yet regarded them as the cobwebs and chimeras of childhood; she saw that the women of her world,though they clung to priests, and, in a way, feared an offended heaven—when they recollected it—yet were as absolutely without moral fiber and mental cleanliness as any naked creatures of Pacific isles sacrificing to their obscene gods, All that she saw; but it did not change her. She was faithful, not because his merit claimed it, but because her duty made such faith the only purity left to her. She was loyal, not because his falseness was ever worthy of it, but be- cause her nature would not let her be other than loyal to the meanest thing that lived. Chastity was to her as honor to the gentleman, as courage to the soldier. It was not arobe embroid- ered and worn for mere parade, and therefore easy to be lifted in the dark by the first audacious hand that’ ruffled it. ** On se console toujours, we know,” her sister-in-law thought, who watched her keenly. ‘‘Still, there is an exception now and then to that rule, as to any other, and she is one of those excep- tions. Itis strange; generally the great world is like ether, or any other dram-drinking; tasted once, it is sought for more and more eagerly every time,fand ends in becoming an indispens- able intoxication. But nothing intoxicates her, and so nothing consoles her. I believe she does not care in the least for being one of the very few perfectly lovely women in Europe. Ibelieve her beauty is almost distasteful and despicable to her, because it brought about her bondage; and, although it is an exaggerated ~_- —- (E(0) Comicbooks