The Cords of Vanity

I came to Fairhaven half-bedrugged with memories of Stella's funeral -- say, of how lightly she had lain, all white and gold, in the grotesque and horrid box, and of Peter's vacant red-rimmed eyes that seemed to wonder why this decorous company should have assembled about the deep and white-lined cavity at his feet and find no answer. Nor, for that matter, could I.

"But it was flagrant, flagrant! " my heart screeched in a grill of impotent wrath. "Eh, You gave me power to reason, so they say! and will You slay me, too, if I presume to use that power? I say, then, it was flagrant and tyrannical and absurd! ‘Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so! ' O Setebos, it wasn't worthy of omnipotence. You know it wasn't! " In such a frame of mind I came again to Bettie Hamlyn.