still left uncertain, for as the bottle circulated, he exhibited such a
faculty for apt, but to the brothers, totally incomprehensible quotation,
that they fled from him without leaving him time to remember what special
calamity was on his mind, or whether this earth was other than an abode
conceived in great jollity for his life-long entertainment.



CHAPTER XLII

JULIANA

The sick night-light burned steadily in Juliana's chamber. On a couch,
beside her bed, Caroline lay sleeping, tired with a long watch. Two
sentences had been passed on Juliana: one on her heart: one on her body:
'Thou art not loved'; and, 'Thou must die.' The frail passion of her
struggle against her destiny was over with her. Quiet as that quiet
which Nature was taking her to, her body reposed. Calm as the solitary
night-light before her open eyes, her spirit was wasting away. 'If I am
not loved, then let me die!' In such a sense she bowed to her fate.

At an hour like this, watching the round of light on the ceiling, with
its narrowing inner rings, a sufferer from whom pain has fled looks back
to the shores she is leaving, and would be well with them who walk there.
It is false to imagine that schemers and workers in the dark are
destitute of the saving gift of conscience. They have it, and it is
perhaps made livelier in them than with easy people; and therefore, they
are imperatively spurred to hoodwink it. Hence, their self-delusion is
deep and endures. They march to their object, and gaining or losing it,
the voice that calls to them is the voice of a blind creature, whom any