immutability of the supreme Reason, while her own reason was left
there to struggle for its life amid a roaring shoreless waste of
doubts and darkness? Oh, how grand, and clear, and logical it had
all looked half an hour ago! And how irrefragably she had been
deducing from it all, syllogism after syllogism, the non-existence
of evil!--how it was but a lower form of good, one of the countless
products of the one great all-pervading mind which could not err or
change, only so strange and recondite in its form as to excite
antipathy in all minds but that of the philosopher, who learnt to
see the stem which connected the apparently bitter fruit with the
perfect root from whence it sprang. Could she see the stem there?--
the connection between the pure and supreme Reason, and the hideous
caresses of the debauched and cowardly Orestes? was not that evil
pure, unadulterate with any vein of good, past, present, or future?
....

True;--she might keep her spirit pure amid it all; she might
sacrifice the base body, and ennoble the soul by the self-sacrifice
.... And yet, would not that increase the horror, the agony, the
evil of it-to her, at least, most real evil, not to be explained
away-and yet the gods required it? Were they just, merciful in
that? Was it like them, to torture her, their last unshaken votary?
Did they require it? Was it not required of them by some higher
power, of whom they were only the emanations, the tools, the
puppets?--and required of that higher power by some still higher
one--some nameless, absolute destiny of which Orestes and she, and
all heaven and earth, were but the victims, dragged along in an
inevitable vortex, helpless, hopeless, toward that for which each
was meant?--And she was meant for this! The thought was unbearable;
it turned her giddy. No! she would not! She would rebel! Like