. . .of the incitement in her manner; when, on one occasion, Robert pointed it out, she denied the charge with mingled passion and surprise.

And it was quite true that she took no pleasure in arousing a man's desire. All her pleasure was derived from baffling it. Curiously enough, an enamored man was an object which aroused in her only a feeling of distaste. And the presence of this feeling satisfied her that she was the innocent victim of his condition rather than the responsible author.

Perhaps it was this attitude of Cornelia's that Robert had in mind when he said that there was an indefinable suggestion of latent wickedness about her, of wickedness she had neither the vitality nor the courage to live up to. How much her luckless amour had to do with her inverted sex emotions, it would be hard to say. Robert's private view was that it had thrown her into the society of people like the Kips Bay tenementers who, by all current. . . Read More