thought not at all; she could not have recalled his features; he was
a mere abstraction, the representative of a wild hope which his
conversation had inspired.

From that day the character of her suffering was altered; it became
less womanly, it defied weakness and grew to a fever of fierce,
unscrupulous rebellion. Whenever she thought of Sidney Kirkwood, the
injury he was inflicting upon her pride rankled into bitter
resentment, unsoftened by the despairing thought of self-subdual
which had at times visited her sick weariness. She bore her
degradations with the sullen indifference of one who is supported by
the hope of a future revenge. The disease inherent in her being,
that deadly outcome of social tyranny which perverts the generous
elements of youth into mere seeds of destruction, developed day by
day, blighting her heart, corrupting her moral sense, even setting
marks of evil upon the beauty of her countenance. A passionate
desire of self-assertion familiarised her with projects, with ideas,
which formerly she had glanced at only to dismiss as ignoble. In
proportion as her bodily health failed, the worst possibilities of
her character came into prominence. Like a creature that is beset by
unrelenting forces, she summoned and surveyed all the craft
faculties lurking in the dark places of her nature; theoretic y she
had now accepted every debasing compact by which a woman can spite
herself on the world's injustice. Self-assertion; to be no longer an
unregarded atom in the mass of those who are born only to labour for
others; to find play for the strength and the passion which, by no
choice of her own, distinguished her from the tame slave. Sometimes
in the silence of night she suffered from a dreadful need of crying
aloud, of uttering her anguish in a scream like that of insanity.
She stifled it only by crushing her face into the pillow until the