They were curled and puckered into half balloons, ready for the wind to
toss and drift into every available gap. So strewn was this passage with
such dry leaves, which even now the wind was drifting upon it more
thickly, that the danger might easily have remained unseen. Then, as
fancy is fickle, her mind darted from the pleasurable idea of her own
death to consider how it would be if she did not make known her
discovery and allowed her enemy to walk into the snare. This idea was
not quite as attractive as the former, for it is sweeter to think of
oneself as innocently dead and mourned, than as guilty and performing
the office of mourner for another; and it was of herself only, whether
as pictured in Bates's sufferings or as left liberated by his death,
that the girl was thinking. Still it afforded relaxation to imagine what
she might do if she were thus left mistress of the situation; and she
devised a scheme of action for these circumstances that, in its clever
adaptation to what would be required, would have greatly amazed the man
who looked upon her as an unthinking child.

The difference between a strong and a weak mind is not that the strong
mind does not indulge itself in wild fancies, but that it never gives to
such fancy the power of capricious sway over the centres of purpose.
This young woman was strong in mind as in body. No flickering intention
of actually performing that which she had imagined had place within her.
She played with the idea of death as she might have played with a toy,
while resting herself from the angry question into which her whole being
had for two days concentrated itself, as to how she could thwart the
will of the man who had assumed authority over her, and gain the freedom
that she felt was necessary to life itself.

She had not lain many minutes upon the out-growing birch before she had
again forgotten her gust of revengeful fancy, and yielded herself to her