fearing?

It is her very innocence and ignorance that rack her. Why should there be
these mysterious suspicions and penalties in the world? Her mind holds
nothing that can answer. But she trembles none the less.

How strange that she should tremble! Two months before, would the same
adventure have affected her at all? Why, she would have laughed it down;
would have walked, singing perhaps, across the sands with Hubert.

Some secret cause has weakened the will--paralysed all the old daring.
Will he never even scold or argue with her again? Nothing but a cold
tolerance--bare civility and protection for Augustina's sake? But never
the old rare kindness--never! He has been much away, and she has been
secretly bitter, ready to revenge herself by some caprice, like a crossed
child! But the days of return--the hours of expectation, of recollection!

Her heart opens to her own reading--like some great flower that bursts
its sheath. But such pain--oh, such pain! She presses her little fingers
on her breast, trying to drive back this humiliating truth that is
escaping her, tearing its way to the light.

How is it that contempt and war can change like this? She seems to have
been fighting against something that all the time had majesty, had
charm--that bore within itself the forces that tame a woman. In all ages
the woman falls before the ascetic--before the man who can do without
her. The intellect may rebel; but beneath its revolt the heart yields.
Oh! to be guided, loved, crushed if need be, by the mystic, whose first
thought can never be for you--who puts his own soul, and a hundred
torturing claims upon it, before your lips, your eyes! Strange passion of