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CHAPTER III
It should not be lightly touched upon, this heroism of Janet
Hallard's in sacrificing three weeks of her work--every hour of which
meant some living to her--in order to save Sally from that ultimate
dark world of dementia towards which she was inevitably drifting.
It was not the sacrifice of time alone, not the fact that on her return
she was compelled to sell some of her valued possessions in order
to meet the rent of her studio which the work she had left undone
would have amply supplied. Much rather was it the noble perseverance
of effort through the dim, impenetrable gloom of Sally's wide-eyed
misery, her own spirits never cast down by the seeming impossibility
of the task, her resources never exhausted by the persistent drain
that was made upon them. Here was the strength of her masculinity
united with the patient endurance of the woman in her heart. No man,
of his own nature alone, could have won through the sweating labour
of those three weeks--few women either. But that very combination
of sex, that very duality of her nature which, as a woman, made her
unlovable to any man, and endeared her so closely to Sally's life,
had succeeded where a thousand others of her sex would have failed.
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