Читать книгу Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences онлайн

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We sat under a lamp at a large table. The things we discussed are now of no consequence, for the need for their discussion no longer exists. I can only give my impression of her.

She struck me as being unutterably weary, weary bodily and perhaps mentally. Her personality suggested a body and a spirit being driven by an implacable will, a will that had no mercy for herself or for others, a will that no power could break. I could not help wondering, as I looked at her, whether she had not her moments of doubt, of self-distrust. She must have had, for all men and women have. But those moments would be few and short. Though she spoke to me very quietly, without a gesture, with one rather tightly clenched hand on the table, I felt the sheer power of her, the power that a quenchless spirit always gives to its owner.

Fanatic? Well, yes, if to be indifferent to the opinion of other people and to be absolutely sure of yourself is to be fanatical. Certainly, she was strange and grim and relentless. And yet one could not doubt her tenderness, her deep sympathy, her devotion to humanity. Yes, a strange woman, but perhaps not so very strange. The qualities I saw in her are common qualities; the difference between her and others was simply that she possessed those qualities in an unusual degree.