dropping her leaf and seed into the teeming earth, whose grain was
garnered, but whose womb was already fertile with the future.

Blanche was still at Mrs. Penticost's, and the engagement, though it had
not actually been announced, had leaked out, and Blanche was not at all
satisfied with the results that had followed upon that dissemination of
knowledge. Annie's hostility she could bear, for she knew that, once
married to Ishmael, his mother would be placed somewhere too far removed
for the nuisance of her to be more than occasional; it was not that
which was blowing with so chill a breath over her spirit. It was, as she
phrased it to herself, the whole thing....

Ever since that night upon the boulders above the wood her sureness,
both of the depth of her own feeling for Ishmael and for the country
method of life that went with him, had been declining, as from some
crest set in too rarefied an air for her to breathe with comfort. Poise
had been slipping from her, and she was genuinely distressed. In the
first stage of her declension she was chiefly occupied with a frantic
snatching at her passion--a sustained effort to pull it back and keep it
with her; in the second she was occupied in wondering how best to get
gracefully out of the entanglement, which was how she grew to envisage
it. At first this seemed to be hardly possible; she saw pathetic
pictures of herself going on with it and sacrificing herself, unaware
how the pleasure of the moment was leading her on, how charming she
found Ishmael's considerate and tender love-making that came to her
jaded nerves with the refreshing quality of a draught of pure water to a
man who has lived too long on champagne. The actual present continued to
be pleasurable long after she had determined that it could never
crystallise into anything more definite, and so she went on from day to
day, enjoying herself, yet vaguely hoping something would happen which