tions.
Hence the man is foolish who goes scattering vague notions regardless
of the soil on which they may fall.

She was used to asking the question, What's the good? but always in
respect of something she wanted out of her way.

"What's the good of an hour or two more if you're not enjoying it?" she
said to herself again and again that Monday. "What's the good of living
when life is pain--or fear of death, from which no fear can save you?"
But the question had no reference to her own life: she was judging for
another--and for another not for his sake, or from his point of view,
but for her own sake, and from where she stood.

All the day she wandered about the house, such thoughts as these in her
heart, and in her pocket a bottle of that concentrated which Mr.
Redmain was taking much diluted for medicine. But she _hoped not to
have to use it_. If only Mr. Redmain would yield the conflict, and
depart without another interview with the lawyer!

But if he would not, and two drops from the said bottle, not taken by
herself, but by another, would save her, all her life to come, from
endless anxiety and grinding care, from weariness and disgust, and
indeed from want; nor that alone, but save likewise that other from an
hour, or two hours, or perhaps a week, or possibly two weeks, or--who
could tell?--it might be a month of pain and moaning and weariness,
would it not be well?--must it not be more than well?

She had not learned to fear temptation; she feared poverty, dependence,
humiliation, labor, _ennui_, misery. The thought of the life that must
follow and wrap her round in the case of the dreaded disclosure was
unendurable; the thought of the suggested frustration was not _so_
unendurable--was not absolutely unendurable--was to be borne--might be
permitted to come--to return--was cogitated--now with imagined
resistance, now with reluctant and partial acceptance, now with faint
resolve, and now with determined resolution--now with the beaded drops
pouring from the forehead, and now with a cold, scornful smile of
triumphant foil and success.

Was she so very exceptionally bad, however? You who hate your brother
or your sister--you do not think yourself at all bad! But you are a
murderer, and she was only a murderer. You do not feel wicked? How do
you know she did? Besides, you hate, and she did not hate; she only
wanted to take care of herself. Lady Macbeth did not hate Duncan; she
only wanted to give her husband h