condition of
weakness.

So the pursuit of the mystery ended, as it had commenced, in confusion,
but of a milder sort and partially transparent at one or two of the
gates she had touched. A mind capable of seeing was twisted by a nature
that would not allow of open eyes; yet the laden emotions of her nature
brought her round by another channel to the stage neighbouring sight,
where facts, dimly recognised for such--as they may be in truth, are
accepted under their disguises, because disguise of them is needed by
the bashful spirit which accuses itself of audaciousness in presuming to
speculate. Had she asked herself the reason of her extended speculation,
her foot would not have stopped more abruptly on the edge of a torrent
than she on that strange road of vapours and flying lights. She did not;
she sang, she sent her voice through the woods and took the splendid
ring of it for an assurance of her peculiarly unshackled state. She
loved this liberty. Of the men who had 'done her the honour,' not one
had moved her to regret the refusal. She lived in the hope of simply
doing good, and could only give her hand to a man able to direct and
help her; one who would bear to be matched with her brother. Who was he?
Not discoverable; not likely to be.

Therefore she had her freedom, an absolutely unflushed freedom, happier
than poor Grace Barrow's. Rumour spoke of Emma Colesworth having a
wing clipped. How is it that sensible women can be so susceptible? For,
thought Jane, the moment a woman is what is called in love, she can give
her heart no longer to the innocent things about her; she is cut away
from Nature: that pure well-water is tasteless to her. To me it is wine!

The drinking of the pure well-water as wine is among the fatal signs
of fire in the cup, showing Nature at work rather to enchain the victim
than bid her daughter go. Jane of course meant the poet's 'Nature.' She
did not reflect that the strong glow of poetic imagination is wanted
to hallow a passionate devotion to the inanimate for this evokes the
spiritual; and passionateness of any kind in narrower brains should be
a proclamation to us of sanguine freshets not coming from a spiritual
source. But the heart betraying deluded her. She fancied she had not
ever been so wedded to Nature as on that walk through the bursting
beechwoods, that sweet lonely walk, perfect in loneliness, where even
a thought of a presence was thrust away as a desecration and images of
s