But intermingled with that pleasure, darting through it like a tongue of flame, was a jealousy of Miss de Vere that not even the bitterest of contempt could allay. Phyllis felt to the full the degradation of being jealous of any one bearing so preposterous a name. Lydia de Vere! Her lips curled at herself. Oh, that shoddy affectation of aristocracy! Lydia de Vere! And that in a ten-twenty-thirty cent theater, and hardly clothed above the waist; and yet, in spite of her painted face, her dyed hair, and all of her thirty years, with shoulders and breast that a duchess might have envied, she was handsome in her common, flamboyant, chorus-girl way, with the meaningless good looks that one associates with tights and gilt spears. Her acting was stilted and false; her fine ladyism an impossible assumption; she railed at the Prince in the accents of a cook giving notice. But her love for Corrèze taxed no histrionic powers. It was vehement and real, as were the kisses she bestowed so freely, and the caresses she lingered over with voluptuous satisfaction. Beneath the drama of fictitious personages was another of flesh and blood, like a splash of scarlet on a printed page.
What fury and anguish lay pent up in one girlish bosom! What a suffocating sense of defeat, bitterness and shame!-- To burn with jealousy of such a woman was more lowering than to-- No, she would not admit that word to herself. It was folly, infatuation, madness--but not love. It would pass with the swiftness it had come, leaving her in wonder at herself, though the scar would remain for many a long day. This man was robbing her of something that never perhaps could be altogether replaced. How wicked it was, how unjust--she who had done nothing to tempt the lightning! She hated him for it; she clenched her teeth and defied him; she understood now what she had read in books that there are men the mind scorns even while the body surrenders. But she was made of stronger stuff; she had pride and courage; her pearls were not for swine to trample on. She would put him out of her head for ever.
It was terrible how he always got back again. There were tones in his voice that melted every resolution. If ever laughter was music, it was his, and the contagion of it swept the house; and his face, though not handsome in the accepted sense, was striking in the effect it gave of an untamed, extraordinary and powerful nature, only half revealed. What was pride or courage or anything? What availed the hatred of that hotly-beating little heart? Had he not but to look her way to make it his own? Had he crushed it in his hand, would it not have died of joy? Hatred, resentment, outraged self-respect--words, nothing but words.