et which
Nature was taking her to, her body reposed. Calm as the solitary
night-light before her open eyes, her spirit was wasting away. 'If I am
not loved, then let me die!' In such a sense she bowed to her fate.

At an hour like this, watching the round of light on the ceiling, with
its narrowing inner rings, a sufferer from whom pain has fled looks back
to the shores she is leaving, and would be well with them who walk there.
It is false to imagine that schemers and workers in the dark are
destitute of the saving gift of conscience. They have it, and it is
perhaps made livelier in them than with easy people; and therefore, they
are imperatively spurred to hoodwink it. Hence, their self-delusion is
deep and endures. They march to their object, and gaining or losing it,
the voice that calls to them is the voice of a blind creature, whom any
answer, provided that the answer is ready, will silence. And at an hour
like this, when finally they snatch their minute of sight on the
threshold of black night, their souls may compare with yonder shining
circle on the ceiling, which, as the light below gasps for air,
contracts, and extends but to mingle with the darkness. They would be
nobler, better, boundlessly good to all;--to those who have injured them
to those whom they have injured. Alas! for any definite deed the limit of
their circle is immoveable, and they must act within it. The trick they
have played themselves imprisons them. Beyond it, they cease to be.

Lying in this utter stillness, Juliana thought of Rose; of her beloved by
Evan. The fever that had left her blood, had left it stagnant, and her
thoughts were quite emotionless. She looked faintly on a far picture. She
saw Rose blooming with pleasures in Elburne House, sliding as a boat
borne by the river's tide to sea, away from her living joy. The breast of
Rose was lucid to her, and in that hour of insight she had clear
knowledge of her cousin's heart; how it scoffed at its base love, and
unwittingly betrayed the power on her still, by clinging to the world and
what it would give her to fill the void; how externally the lake was
untroubled, and a mirror to the passing day; and how within there pressed
a flood against an iron dam. Evan, too, she saw. The Countess was right
in her judgement of Juliana's love. Juliana looked very little to his
qualities. She loved him when she thought him guilty, which made her
conceive that her love was of a diviner cast than Rose