Easily, and without correction by reason, her
imagination made pictures, superb backgrounds casting a rich though
phantom light upon the facts in the foreground. Splendid as the waters
that drop with resounding thunder from high ledges of rock, and plunge
downwards into the blue depths of night, was the presence of love she
dreamt, drawing into it every drop of the force of life, and dashing
them all asunder in the superb catastrophe in which everything was
surrendered, and nothing might be reclaimed. The man, too, was some
magnanimous hero, riding a great horse by the shore of the sea. They
rode through forests together, they galloped by the rim of the sea.
But waking, she was able to contemplate a perfectly loveless marriage,
as the thing one did actually in real life, for possibly the people
who dream thus are those who do the most prosaic things.
At this moment she was much inclined to sit on into the night,
spinning her light fabric of thoughts until she tired of their
futility, and went to her mathematics; but, as she knew very well, it
was necessary that she should see her father before he went to bed.
The case of Cyril Alardyce must be discussed, her mother's illusions
and the rights of the family attended to.
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