Poor Fanny! She sang little, and looked beautiful through that
inappropriate hymn. Above her stood Harry--mercifully in a dark suit and
dark tie, looking almost handsome. And his lacerating, pure tenor sounded
well, when the words were drowned in the general commotion. Brilliant she
looked, and brilliant she felt, for she was hot and angrily miserable and
inflamed with a sort of fatal despair. Because there was about him a
physical attraction which she really hated, but which she could not
escape from. He was the first man who had ever kissed her. And his
kisses, even while she rebelled from them, had lived in her blood and
sent roots down into her soul. After all this time she had come back to
them. And her soul groaned, for she felt dragged down, dragged down to
earth, as a bird which some dog has got down in the dust. She knew her
life would be unhappy. She knew that what she was doing was fatal. Yet it
was her doom. She had to come back to him.
He had to sing two solos this afternoon: one before the 'address' from
the pulpit and one after. Fanny looked at him, and wondered he was not
too shy to stand up there in front of all the people. But no, he was not
shy. He had even a kind of assurance on his face as he looked down from
the choir gallery at her: the assurance of a common man deliberately
entrenched in his commonness. Oh, such a rage went through her veins as
she saw the air of triumph, laconic, indifferent triumph which sat so
obstinately and recklessly on his eyelids as he looked down at her.
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