on
registered itself in the memory of the silent member of the trio.

In her dreams that night, those three concluding and energetic
adjectives played strange pranks, as, in dreams, words and phrases often
will. Her deep regret at Miss Du Prel's departure, her dread of her own
future, her growing sense of the torment, and horror, and sacrifice that
form so large a part of the order of the world, all appeared to be
united fantastically in malignant and threatening form, in the final
words of the Professor: "It is monstrous, it is dastardly, it is
damnable!" The agony of the whole earth seemed to hang over the sleeper,
hovering and black and intolerable, crushing her with a sense of
hopeless pity and fatigue.

And on waking, though the absurd masquerading of words and thoughts had
ceased, she was still weighed down with the horror of the dream, which
she knew had a corresponding reality still more awful. And there was no
adversary to all this anguish; everybody acquiesced, nay, everybody
threw on yet another log to the martyr's pile, and coolly watched the
hungry flames at their work, for "Nature," they all agreed, demanded
sacrifice.

It was in vain to turn for relief to the wise and good; the "wise"
insisted on keeping up the altar fires that they might appease the
blood-thirsty goddess by a continuous supply of victims (for the noble
purpose of saving the others); the "good" trusted to the decision of the
wise; they were humbly content to allow others to judge for them; for by
this means would they not secure some of the spoils?

No, no; there was no help anywhere on earth, no help, no help. So ran
Hadria's thoughts, in the moments of vivid sensation, between sleeping
and waking. "Suffering, sacrifice, oppression: there is nothing else
under the sun, under the sun."

Perhaps a brilliant beam that had found its way, like a message of
mercy, through the blind, and shone straight on to the pillow, had
suggested the form of the last thought.

Hadria moved her hand into the ray, that she might feel the warmth and
"the illusion of kindness."

There was one person, and at the moment, only one, whose existence was
comforting to remember. The hundreds of kind and good people, who were
merely kind and good where popular sentiment expected or commended such
conduct, gave no re-assurance; on the contrary, they proved the
desperation of our plight, since wisdom and goodness themselves were
busy at the savage work.

When