an instant, she should
sleep at her post.

"I like him--I like him; but I want to hate----"

"You want to hate him!" Olive broke in.

"No, I want to hate my liking. I want you to keep before me all the
reasons why I should--many of them so fearfully important. Don't let me
lose sight of anything! Don't be afraid I shall not be grateful when you
remind me."

That was one of the singular speeches that Verena made in the course of
their constant discussion of the terrible question, and it must be
confessed that she made a great many. The strangest of all was when she
protested, as she did again and again to Olive, against the idea of
their seeking safety in retreat. She said there was a want of dignity in
it--that she had been ashamed, afterwards, of what she had done in
rushing away from New York. This care for her moral appearance was, on
Verena's part, something new; inasmuch as, though she had struck that
note on previous occasions--had insisted on its being her duty to face
the accidents and alarms of life--she had never erected such a standard
in the face of a disaster so sharply possible. It was not her habit
either to talk or to think about her dignity, and when Olive found her
taking that tone she felt more than ever that the dreadful, ominous,
fatal part of the situation was simply that now, for the first time in
all the history of their sacred friendship, Verena was not sincere. She
was not sincere when she told her that she wanted to be helped against
Mr. Ransom--when she exhorted her, that way, to keep everything that was
salutary and fortifying before her eyes. Olive did not go so far as to
believe that she was playing a part and putting her off with words
which, glossing over her treachery, only made it more cruel; she would
have admitted that that treachery was as yet unwitting, that Verena
deceived herself first of all, thinking she really wished to be saved.
Her phrases about her dignity were insincere, as well as her pretext
that they must stay to look after Miss Birdseye: as if Doctor Prance
were not abundantly able to discharge that function and would not be
enchanted to get them out of the house! Olive had perfectly divined by
this time that Doctor Prance had no sympathy with their movement, no
general ideas; that she was simply shut up to petty questions of
physiological science and of her own professional activity. She would
never have invited her down if she had realised this in advance so muc