consciousness of power that springs from
unimpaired faculties.

I have come to think over these things with a sad heart. Within the
circle of such memories lies enshrined the greatest sorrow of a life
that has not been without its share of trials. I had intended to have
revealed to my reader a painful incident, but I find that age has not
yet blunted the acute misery of my feelings; nor can I, with all the
weight of long years upon me, endure to open up again a grief whose
impress has stamped every hour of existence. Let me not be supposed as
uttering these words in any spirit of querulousness with fortune; I have
had much, far more than most men, to feel grateful for. Well do I know,
besides, that to my successes in life I can lay no claim in any merits
or deservings of my own; that my shortcomings have been numerous, and
leniently dealt with. I speak, therefore, not complainingly. I would
not, moreover, like to spend in repinings the last hours of a long life:
the goal cannot well be distant now; and as, footsore and weary, I tread
the few remaining miles of my earthly pilgrimage, I would rather cheer
my heart with the prospect of rest before me, than darken the future
with one shadow of the past.

Margot had insisted on remaining. She felt as though a challenge had
been offered to her, and it would be cowardice to decline it. Over and
over again was she wont to repeat to herself the contempt she felt
for that applause in which it was believed she exulted. She burned,
therefore, for a moment wherein she could display this haughty contempt,
and throw back with proud disdain their homage, by showing herself as
indifferent to rebuke as she had ever been to adulation. The day was
passed in moods of silence, or paroxysms of the wildest excitement.
After an hour or more perhaps of unbroken calm, she would burst forth
into a passionate denunciation of the world's injustice, with bitter
and poignant regrets for the hour when she became a suppliant for its
favors. The proudest efforts she would make to rise above this were sure
to be defeated by some sudden sense of defeat,--an agonizing conviction
that threw her into violent weeping; a state of suffering that even now
I dread to think of.

She grew calmer towards evening, but it was a calm that terrified me:
there was a slow and careful precision in every word she spoke that
denoted effort; her smile, too, had a fixity in it that remained for
seconds after the emotion whic