What had become of all her ardours, her aspirations, her theories, her high estimate of her independence and her incipient conviction that she should never marry?
These things had been absorbed in a more primitive need--a need the answer to which brushed away numberless questions, yet gratified infinite desires.

It simplified the situation at a stroke, it came down from above like the light of the stars, and it needed no explanation.

There was explanation enough in the fact that he was her lover, her own, and that she should be able to be of use to him.

She could surrender to him with a kind of humility, she could marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only taking, she was giving.
He brought Pansy with him two or three times to the Cascine--Pansy who was very little taller than a year before, and not much older.

That she would always be a child was the conviction expressed by her father, who held her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her to go and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady.