She had
quiet now, and was most of the time alone, but that clarity which she
had expected, that quickness and surety of purpose which she had
always believed to be unfailingly hers, refused to come.
She tried to have it otherwise, but the outstanding figure in her
meditations was Larry. Larry, who had not exposed her at the
Sherwoods', and whose influence had caused Hunt also not to expose
her--Larry, who without deception was on a familiar footing at the
Sherwoods' where she had been received only through trickery--Larry,
a fugitive in danger from so many enemies, perhaps after all
undeserved enemies--Larry, who looked to be making good on his boast
to achieve success through honesty--Larry, who had again told her that
he loved her. She liked Dick Sherwood--she really did. But Larry--that
was something different.
And thus she thought on, drawn this way and that, and unable to reach
a decision. But with most people, when in a state of acute mental
turmoil, that which has been most definite in the past, instinct,
habit of mind, purpose, tradition, becomes at least temporarily the
dominant factor through the mere circumstance that it has existed
powerfully before, through its comparative stability, through its
semi-permanence. And so with Maggie. She had for that one afternoon
almost been won over against herself by the workings of Larry's secret
diplomacy.
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