e, and taking the quiet return of morn and
evening--still more the star-like out-glowing of some pure
fellow-feeling, some generous impulse breaking our inward darkness--as
a salvation that reconciles us to hardship. Those who have a
self-knowledge prompting such self-accusation as Hamlet's, can
understand this habitual feeling of rescue. And it was felt by
Gwendolen as she lived through and through again the terrible history
of her temptations, from their first form of illusory self-pleasing
when she struggled away from the hold of conscience, to their latest
form of an urgent hatred dragging her toward its satisfaction, while
she prayed and cried for the help of that conscience which she had once
forsaken. She was now dwelling on every word of Deronda's that pointed
to her past deliverance from the worst evil in herself, and the worst
infliction of it on others, and on every word that carried a force to
resist self-despair.

But she was also upborne by the prospect of soon seeing him again: she
did not imagine him otherwise than always within her reach, her supreme
need of him blinding her to the separateness of his life, the whole
scene of which she filled with his relation to her--no unique
preoccupation of Gwendolen's, for we are all apt to fall into this
passionate egoism of imagination, not only toward our fellow-men, but
toward God. And the future which she turned her face to with a willing
step was one where she would be continually assimilating herself to
some type that he would hold before her. Had he not first risen on her
vision as a corrective presence which she had recognized in the
beginning with resentment, and at last with entire love and trust? She
could not spontaneously think of an end to that reliance, which had
become to her imagination like the firmness of the earth, the only
condition of her walking.

And Deronda was not long before he came to Diplow, which was a more
convenient distance from town than the Abbey. He had wished to carry
out a plan for taking Ezra and Mirah to a mild spot on the coast, while
he prepared another home which Mirah might enter as his bride, and
where they might unitedly watch over her brother. But Ezra begged not
to be removed, unless it were to go with them to the East. All outward
solicitations were becoming more and more of a burden to him; but his
mind dwelt on the possibility of this voyage with a visionary joy.
Deronda, in his preparations for the marriage, wh