Chapter IX
MARGARET’S night was disturbed, and next day she could not go about her work with her usual tranquillity. She tried to reason herself into a natural explanation of the events that had happened. The telegram which Susie had received pointed to a definite scheme on Haddo’s part, and suggested that his sudden illness was but a device to get into the studio. Once there he had used her natural sympathy as a means whereby to exercise his great hypnotic power, and all she had seen was merely the creation of his own libidinous fancy. But though she sought to persuade herself that, in playing a vile trick on her, he had taken a shameful advantage of her pity, she could not look upon him with anger. Her contempt for him, her utter loathing, had vanished before a feeling that aroused in her horror and dismay. She could not get the man out of her thoughts. All that he had said, all that she had seen, seemed, as though it possessed a power of material growth, unaccountably to increase in her. It was as if a rank weed were planted in her heart and slid long poisonous tentacles down every artery, so that each part of her body was enmeshed. Work could not distract her, conversation, exercise, art, left her still absorbed; and between her and all the actions of life stood the flamboyant, burly form
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