ic poet to us across the ages, finding, as usual, the simplest words
for the sublimest fact--[Greek: deinon to tiktein estin.] It transforms
all things by its vital heat: it turns timidity into fierce courage, and
dreadless defiance into tremulous submission; it turns thoughtlessness
into foresight, and yet stills all anxiety into calm content; it makes
selfishness become self-denial, and gives even to hard vanity the glance
of admiring love. Yes! if Janet had been a mother, she might have been
saved from much sin, and therefore from much of her sorrow.

But do not believe that it was anything either present or wanting in poor
Janet that formed the motive of her husband's cruelty. Cruelty, like
every other vice, requires no motive outside itself--it only requires
opportunity. You do not suppose Dempster had any motive for drinking
beyond the craving for drink; the presence of brandy was the only
necessary condition. And an unloving, tyrannous, brutal man needs no
motive to prompt his cruelty; he needs only the perpetual presence of a
woman he can call his own. A whole park full of tame or timid-eyed
animals to torment at his will would not serve him so well to glut his
lust of torture; they could not feel as one woman does; they could not
throw out the keen retort which whets the edge of hatred.

Janet's bitterness would overflow in ready words; she was not to be made
meek by cruelty; she would repent of nothing in the face of injustice,
though she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look that recalled the
old days of fondness; and in times of comparative calm would often
recover her sweet woman's habit of caressing playful affection. But such
days were become rare, and poor Janet's soul was kept like a vexed sea,
tossed by a new storm before the old waves have fallen. Proud, angry
resistance and sullen endurance were now almost the only alternations she
knew. She would bear it all proudly to the world, but proudly towards him
too; her woman's weakness might shriek a cry for pity under a heavy blow,
but voluntarily she would do nothing to mollify him, unless he first
relented. What had she ever done to him but love him too well--but
believe in him too foolishly? He had no pity on her tender flesh; he
could strike the soft neck he had once asked to kiss. Yet she would not
admit her wretchedness; she had married him blindly, and she would bear
it out to the terrible end, whatever that might be. Better this misery
than