... I wonder--" And
Owen began to think if he should go to Ayrdale Mansions himself to
find out. But if she had not gone away with Ulick, and if he should
meet her in the street, how embarrassing it would be! Of what should
he speak to her? Of the intrigue she had been carrying on with Ulick
Dean? Should he pretend that he knew nothing of it? She would be
ashamed of this renewal of her affection for Ulick, though she had
not gone away with him; and if she had not gone, it would be only on
account of Monsignor. He sat irresolute, his thoughts dropping away
into remembrances of the day before--the two sitting together under
the lime-trees. That was the unendurable bitterness; it was easy to
forgive her Ulick, he was nothing compared to this deliberate
soiling of the past. If she could not have avoided the park, she
might have avoided certain corners sacred to the memory of their
love-story--the groves of limes facing the Serpentine being
especially sacred to his memory.
"But only man remembers; woman is the grosser animal." And in his
armchair Owen meditated on the coarseness of the female mind, always
careless of detail, even seeming to take pleasure in overlaying the
past with the present.
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