Anne's performance was too perfect, I thought, for conscious art,
and she was not a genius. She was that most dangerous of all engines,
a good person behaving wickedly. All her past of high-mindedness and
kindness protected her now like an armour from the smallest suspicion.
All the grandeur of her conduct at the time of the divorce was
remembered as a proof that she at least had a noble soul. Who could
doubt that she wished him well?
If so, she soon appeared to be the only person who did. For, as we
all know, pity is one of the most dangerous passions to unloose. It
demands a victim. We rise to pathos, only over the dead bodies of
our nearest and dearest.
Every phrase, every gesture of Anne's stirred one profoundly, and it
was inevitable, I suppose, that Julian should be selected as the
sacrifice. I noticed that people began to speak of him in the past,
though he was still moving among us--"As Julian used to say."
He and Anne fortunately never met, but she and the new Mrs. Julian
had one encounter in public. If even then Anne would have shown the
slightest venom all might still have been well. But, no, the worn,
elderly woman, face to face with the young beauty who had possessed
herself of everything in the world, showed nothing but a tenderness
so perfect that every heart was wrung.
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