But there is, just the same. It is in all of us who are women at all. The power he possesses is the power of most men multiplied many times. . . . Latin women, who are more honest, can deal with it. . . . French women . . . some French women . . . are cynical and rational. . . . And they are better protected than ourselves, because they know what they are about. . . . A woman like old Thérèse could never have been hurt by him. They are protected from suffering, at least a certain kind of suffering. They would not be caught as we have been . . . stupidly."
French women! (thought Ellen). There was Madame Nozières. Had it protected her? Still, her suffering had not been of this sort. It was a different thing. What Sabine said about women like themselves was true. Somehow Sabine had cleared the air. She (Ellen) had always thought of him thus in the moments when her head had been quite clear . . . as an animal, a handsome, docile cat. It explained too why she had always had a small, secret terror of him; why she had always been shocked by the fierceness of his love. When he had come to her in the Babylon Arms the distaste had not been so strong; but he had been more fresh then, less conscious of what he was. When he returned to her, it was with the freshness gone, with the romance worn away so that only the other thing showed through, naked yet fascinating to a woman who (she was honest with herself) . . . a woman who had never known anything but the timid, pitiful love of Clarence.
And there was one thing she could not endure—that she, Ellen Tolliver, the part of her which she had guarded so jealously, should ever be destroyed by losing control over her own body.
And again she kept seeing him, dark and secret, this time as he sat across from her at the table in the small white room overlooking the Mediterranean, with the old sense of conflict rising sharply between them. She was conscious of watching him, as he watched her, of wondering how long she could go on thus, imprisoned. She saw again the gray eyes watching her, stubbornly, as if she were a proud animal which they had set themselves to
