Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/337

Why should anyone care for her—unless it were indeed with that amour passion which takes no account of liking or disliking, approval or disapproval? She had that feeling for Basil, and she doubted that he had it for her. What he had for her was really the amour gout; he found her amusing, he delighted in her beauty, he had tenderness for her, deep affection—but he had not the passion that could bind him to her beyond possibility of change. Here—here—was the reason of her intense feeling at the discovery of his relation with another woman. Instinct told her—had told her from the first—that she might lose him. Her jealousy was a spasm of fear. … She thought of Edith and of the look on Egisto's dark face. There was a man who was held—who was forced to act in spite of himself, against his will, by a woman he despised at heart. And it was in that way that she herself was held. There must be something base in such a passion——. But, no! something in her cried out—it was terrible, terribly beautiful, deep as the nature that held it, deeper than right OP wrong. She had wished sometimes that she could kill her love for Basil—but she knew that with it would go her life.