had preserved her letters of the old school-days. She had burnt his.
But she had not burnt the letters of Mr. Morsfield; and she cared nothing
for that man. Assuredly she merited the stigma branding women as crack-
brained. Yet she was not one of the fools; she could govern a household,
and she liked work, she had the capacity for devotedness. So, therefore,
she was a woman perverted by her position, and she shook her bonds in
revolt from marriage. Imagining a fall down some suddenly spied chasm
of her nature, she had a sisterly feeling for the women named sinful.
At the same time, reflecting that they are sinful only with the sinful,
she knelt thankfully at the feet of the man who had saved her from such
danger. Tears threatened. They were a poor atonement for the burning of
his younger letters. But not he--she was the sufferer, and she whipped
up a sensation of wincing at the flames they fell to, and at their void
of existence, committing sentimental idiocies worthy of a lovesick girl,
consciously to escape the ominous thought, which her woman's perception
had sown in her, that he too chafed at a marriage no marriage: was true
in fidelity, not true through infidelity, as she had come to be. The
thought implied misery for both. She entered a black desolation, with
the prayer that he might not be involved, for his own sake: partly also
on behalf of the sustaining picture the young schoolmaster at his task,
merry among his dear boys, to trim and point them body and mind for their
business in the world, painted for her a weariful prospect of the life
she must henceforth drag along.

Is a woman of the plain wits common to numbers ever deceived in her
perception of a man's feelings for her? Let her first question herself
whether she respects him. If she does not, her judgement will go easily
astray, intuition and observation are equally at fault, she has no key;
he has charmed her blood, that is all. But if she respects him, she
cannot be deceived; respect is her embrace of a man's character.