orture, who feels that agony is overcome and fear of self surpassed.
This possibility had there ever been in Emily, though associating with
such variant instincts. Circumstances had brought the occasion which
weighed one part of her nature against the other, and with this result.

You may not judge her coldly; yet it is possible to indicate those
points which connect her enthusiasm of sacrifice with the reasonings and
emotions of the impartial mind. In the moment that she heard of her
father's self-destruction, she knew that her own destiny was cast; the
struggle with desire, with arguments of her self-love, with claims of
others, this also she foresaw and measured. Her resolve came of the
interaction of intense feeling, feeling which only process of time could
reduce from its morbid predominance, and that idealism which was the
keynote of her personality. It was not that she condemned herself for
having refused to pay the price which would have saved her father; she
may have done so in her wildest paroxysms of grief, but in the silences
which ensued she knew that there is an arbiter above natural affection,
and that not with impunity could a life be purchased by the death of a
soul. She had refused; it might be she would still have refused had she
foreseen the worst; but could she move on over her father's body to a
life of joy? Not only did piety forbid it; the compassionate voice of
her heart cried against what she deemed such cruelty. Her father was
dead; nothing that she did henceforth would concern him for good or ill;
none the less in her eyes was his claim upon her, the claim of one she
had tenderly loved calling to her for pity from that desolate grave.
Which of us entirely out-reasons that surviving claim of the beloved
dead? Which of us would, in his purest hour, desire to do so? She could
not save him, but, as she valued her most precious human privileges, she
dared not taste the fruits of life of which he was for ever robbed.
Between her and happiness loomed that agonising face, She might
disregard it, might close her eyes and press on, might live down the old
sacred pity and give herself to absorbing bliss what would be the true
value of that she gained? Nay, it was idle to affect that she had the
choice. She felt that the first memory of that face in the midst of
enjoyment would break her heart. Those last dark hours of his she must
live and relive in her own mind. Dead? He was dead? Oh, did not the
very t