up within them, jeered at, utterly alone. It is a trial we laugh
at. I think the quick fagots at the stake were fitter subjects
for laughter than the slow gnawing hunger in the heart of many a
slighted woman or a selfish man. They come out of the trial as
out of martyrdom, according to their faith: you see its marks
sometimes in a frivolous old age going down with tawdry hopes and
starved eyes to the grave; you see its victory in the freshest,
fullest lives in the earth. This woman had accepted her trial,
but she took it up as an inflexible fate which she did not
understand; it was new to her; its solitude, its hopeless thirst
were freshly bitter. She loathed herself as one whom God had
thought unworthy of every woman's right,--to love and be loved.

She went to the window, looking blankly out into the gray cold.
Any one with keen analytic eye, noting the thin muscles of this
woman, the protruding brain, the eyes deep, concealing, would
have foretold that she would conquer in the fight; force her soul
down,-- but that the forcing down would leave the weak, flaccid
body spent and dead. One thing was certain: no curious eyes
would see the struggle; the body might be nerveless or sickly,
but it had the great power of reticence; the calm with which she
faced the closest gaze was natural to her,--no mask. When she
left her room and went down, the same unaltered quiet that had
baffled Knowles steadied her step and cooled her eyes.

After you have made a sacrifice of yourself for others, did you
ever notice how apt you were to doubt, as soon as the deed was
irrevocable, whether, after all, it were worth while to have done
it? How mean seems the good gained! How new and unimagined the
agony of empty hands and stifled wish! Very slow the angels are,