' Her long face looked sardonic and
amused.
'Yes,' said Ursula vaguely. After all, the tiresome thing was, he did
not want an odalisk, he did not want a slave. Hermione would have been
his slave--there was in her a horrible desire to prostrate herself
before a man--a man who worshipped her, however, and admitted her as
the supreme thing. He did not want an odalisk. He wanted a woman to
TAKE something from him, to give herself up so much that she could take
the last realities of him, the last facts, the last physical facts,
physical and unbearable.
And if she did, would he acknowledge her? Would he be able to
acknowledge her through everything, or would he use her just as his
instrument, use her for his own private satisfaction, not admitting
her? That was what the other men had done. They had wanted their own
show, and they would not admit her, they turned all she was into
nothingness. Just as Hermione now betrayed herself as a woman. Hermione
was like a man, she believed only in men's things.
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