How could she invite him? It had gone on so long, their
estrangement, such years; she would hardly know what words to use; and
besides, he would not come. Why should he come? He didn't care about
being with her. What could they talk about? Between them was the
barrier of his work and her religion. She could not--how could she,
believing as she did in purity, in responsibility for the effect of
one's actions on others--bear his work, bear living by it; and he she
knew, had at first resented and then been merely bored by her religion.
He had let her slip away; he had given her up; he no longer minded; he
accepted her religion indifferently, as a settled fact. Both it and
she--Rose's mind, becoming more luminous in the clear light of April at
San Salvatore, suddenly saw the truth--bored him.
Naturally when she saw this, when that morning it flashed upon
her for the first time, she did not like it; she liked it so little
that for a space the whole beauty of Italy was blotted out. What was
to be done about it? She could not give up believing in good and not
liking evil, and it must be evil to live entirely on the proceeds of
adulteries, however dead and distinguished they were. Besides, if she
did, if she sacrificed her whole past, her bringing up, her work for
the last ten years, would she bore him less? Rose felt right down at
her very roots that if you have once thoroughly bored somebody it is
next to impossible to unbore him.
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