nxiety. Not paleness, for of
that her complexion was incapable, but a dull pallor possessed her
cheek. If one had met her as she roamed the house that night, he might
well have taken her for some naughty ancestor, whose troubled
conscience, not yet able to shake off the madness of some evil deed,
made her wander still about the place where she had committed it.

She believed in no supreme power who cares that right should be done in
his worlds. Here, it may be, some of my unbelieving acquaintances,
foreseeing a lurid something on the horizon of my story, will be
indignant that the capacity for crime should be thus associated with
the denial of a Live Good. But it remains a mere fact that it is easier
for a man to commit a crime when he does not fear a willed retribution.
Tell me there is no merit in being prevented by fear; I answer, the
talk is not of merit. As the world is, that is, as the race of men at
present is, it is just as well that the man who has no merit, and never
dreamed of any, should yet be a little hindered from cutting his
neighbor's throat at his evil pleasure.--No; I do not mean hindered by
a lie--I mean hindered by the poorest apprehension of the grandest
truth.

Of those who do not believe, some have never had a noble picture of God
presented to them; but whether their phantasm is of a mean God because
they refuse him, or they refuse him because their phantasm of him is
mean, who can tell? Anyhow, mean notions must come of meanness, and,
uncharitable as it may appear, I can not but think there is a moral
root to all chosen unbelief. But let God himself judge his own.

With Sepia, what was _best_ meant what was best for her, and _best for
her_ meant _most after her liking_.

She had in her time heard a good deal about _euthanasia_, and had taken
her share in advocating it. I do not assume this to be anything
additional against her; one who does not believe in God, may in such an
advocacy indulge a humanity pitiful over the irremediable ills of the
race; and, being what she was, she was no worse necessarily for
advocating that than for advocating cremation, which she
did--occasionally, I must confess, a little coarsely. But the notion of
_euthanasia_ might well work for evil in a mind that had not a thought
for the case any more than for the betterment of humanity, or indeed
for anything but its own consciousness of pleasure or comfort.
Opinions, like drugs, work differently on different constitu