w far it was necessary to go
in the path of self-sacrifice. Nothing was wanting to make the wrong she
should do her complete; she had deceived her up to the very last; only
three months earlier she had reasserted her vows, given her word, with
every show of fidelity and enthusiasm. There were hours when it seemed
to Verena that she must really push her inquiry no further, but content
herself with the conclusion that she loved as deeply as a woman could
love and that it didn't make any difference. She felt Olive's grasp too
clinching, too terrible. She said to herself that she should never dare,
that she might as well give up early as late; that the scene, at the
end, would be something she couldn't face; that she had no right to
blast the poor creature's whole future. She had a vision of those
dreadful years; she knew that Olive would never get over the
disappointment. It would touch her in the point where she felt
everything most keenly; she would be incurably lonely and eternally
humiliated. It was a very peculiar thing, their friendship; it had
elements which made it probably as complete as any (between women) that
had ever existed. Of course it had been more on Olive's side than on
hers, she had always known that; but that, again, didn't make any
difference. It was of no use for her to tell herself that Olive had
begun it entirely and she had only responded out of a kind of charmed
politeness, at first, to a tremendous appeal. She had lent herself,
given herself, utterly, and she ought to have known better if she didn't
mean to abide by it. At the end of three weeks she felt that her inquiry
was complete, but that after all nothing was gained except an immense
interest in Basil Ransom's views and the prospect of an eternal
heartache. He had told her he wanted her to know him, and now she knew
him pretty thoroughly. She knew him and she adored him, but it didn't
make any difference. To give him up or to give Olive up--this effort
would be the greater of the two.

If Basil Ransom had the advantage, as far back as that day in New York,
of having struck a note which was to reverberate, it may easily be
imagined that he did not fail to follow it up. If he had projected a new
light into Verena's mind, and made the idea of giving herself to a man
more agreeable to her than that of giving herself to a movement, he
found means to deepen this illumination, to drag her former standard in
the dust. He was in a very odd situatio