It had brought back her
thoughts and feelings all at once to their normal standards, making
her recollection of that infatuation seem like a fantastic, grotesque
dream; unreal, impossible, yet shamefully real. Every time she entered
her chamber, and her eye caught sight of the little hole in the
curtain whence she had spied upon Perez, shame and self-contempt
overcame her like a flood. How could she, how ever could she be left
to do such a thing! What would the obsequious, admiring gallants she
had left in her parlor say if they but knew what that little pin-hole
in her curtain reminded her of? She could not believe it possible
herself that the girl whose fine-cut haughty beauty confronted her
gaze from the mirror could have so lost her self-respect, could have
actually--Oh! and tears of self-despite would rush into her eyes as
her remorseless memory set before her those scenes. And had she been
utterly beside herself that day in the store, when she gave him that
look and that hand-clasp? But for that the only fruit of her folly
would have been the loss of her own self-respect, but now she was
guilty toward him. This wretched business was dead earnest to him, if
not to her.
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