o foul air and unnatural living. If she had
known it, it would not have helped her. She could not have believed
it, for it is the peculiarity of certain physical disorders that their
physical character does not appear, and that they disguise themselves
under purely mental shapes. Montgomery, her brother, the desperate
outlook in the future, it is true, were real; but her lack of health
was the lens which magnified her suffering into hideous dimensions.
The desire to get rid of it by one sudden plunge was strong upon her,
and the friendly hand which at the nick of time intervenes in romances
did not rescue her. Nevertheless, she held back and passed on.
Afterwards the thought that she had been close to suicide was for
months a new terror. She was unaware that the distance between us and
dreadful crimes is much greater often than it appears to be. The man
who looks on a woman with adulterous desire has already committed
adultery in his heart if he be restrained only by force or fear of
detection; but if the restraint, although he may not be conscious of
it, is self-imposed, he is not guilty. Nay, even the dread of
consequences is a motive of sufficient respectability to make a large
difference between the sinfulness of mere lust and that of its
fulfilment. No friendly hand, we say, interrupted her purpose, but she
went on her way. Hardly had she reached the open quay, when there came
a peal of thunder. In London the gradual approach of a thunderstorm
working up from a long distance is not perceived, and the suddenness of
the roar for a moment startled her. But from her childhood she had
always shown a strange liking to watch a thunderstorm, and, if
possible, to be in it. It was her habit, when others were alarmed and
covered their eyes, to go close to the window in order to see the
lightning, and once she had been caught actually outside the door
peering round the corner, because the strength of the tempest lay in
that direction. The rain in an instant came down in torrents, the
flashes were incessant, and flamed round the golden cross of St. Paul's
nearly opposite to her. She took off her bonnet and prayed that she
might be struck, and so released with no sin and no pain. She was not
heard; a bolt descended within a few feet of her, blinding her, but it
fell upon a crane, passed harmlessly down the chain into a lot of rusty
old scrap, and so spent itself. She remained standing there alone and
unnoticed, fo