being. He may win her back to the love of beauty and the sense of joy;
but he is not the one to stand by her side when the stern conflict
between pleasure and right, sense and soul, the world and God, is being
fought out within her.

With her introduction to Stephen Guest, that conflict assumes specific
and tangible form; and it has emphatically to be fought out _alone_. All
external circumstances are against her; even Lucy's sweet unjealous
temper, and Tom's bitter hatred, combining with Philip's painful self-
consciousness to keep the safeguard of his presence less constantly at
her side. At last the crowning temptation comes. Without design, by a
surprise on the part of both, the step has been taken which may well seem
irretraceable. Going back from it is not merely going back from joy and
hope, but going back to deeper loneliness than she has ever known; and
going back also to misunderstanding, shame, and lifelong repentance. But
conscience, the imperative requirements of the higher life within, have
resumed their power. There is no paltering with that inward voice; no
possibility but the acceptance of the present urgent right,--the instant
fleeing from the wrong, though with it is bound up all of enjoyment life
can know. It is thus she has to take up her cross, not the less hard to
bear that her own hands have so far fashioned it.

One grave criticism on the death-scene has been made, that at first sight
seems unanswerable. It is said that no such full, swift recognition
between the brother and sister, in those last moments of their
long-severed lives, is possible; because there is no true point of
contact through which such recognition, on the brother's part, could
ensue. We think, however, there is something revealed to us in the
brother which brings him nearer to what is noblest and deepest in the
sister than at first appears. He also has his ideal of duty and right: