owly approached
him, as he, too, stood up. Then she began to speak again in a more
veiled voice. "I can't explain; I can only say what is. I don't love my
father's religion now any more than I did then. Before I married the
second time I was baptized; I made myself like the people I lived
among. I had a right to do it; I was not like a brute, obliged to go
with my own herd. I have not repented; I will not say that I have
repented. But yet"--here she had come near to her son, and paused; then
again retreated a little and stood still, as if resolute not to give
way utterly to an imperious influence; but, as she went on speaking,
she became more and more unconscious of anything but the awe that
subdued her voice. "It is illness, I don't doubt that it has been
gathering illness--my mind has gone back: more than a year ago it
began. You see my gray hair, my worn look: it has all come fast.
Sometimes I am in an agony of pain--I dare say I shall be to-night.
Then it is as if all the life I have chosen to live, all thoughts, all
will, forsook me and left me alone in spots of memory, and I can't get
away: my pain seems to keep me there. My childhood--my girlhood--the
day of my marriage--the day of my father's death--there seems to be
nothing since. Then a great horror comes over me: what do I know of
life or death? and what my father called 'right' may be a power that is
laying hold of me--that is clutching me now. Well, I will satisfy him.
I cannot go into the darkness without satisfying him. I have hidden
what was his. I thought once I would burn it. I have not burned it. I
thank God I have not burned it!"

She threw herself on her cushions again, visibly fatigued. Deronda,
moved too strongly by her suffering for other impulses to act within
him, drew near her, and said, entreatingly--

"Will you not spare yourself this evening? Let us leave the rest till
to-morrow."

"No," she said decisively. "I will confess it all, now that I have come
up to it. Often when I am at ease it all fades away; my whole self
comes quite back; but I know it will sink away again, and the other
will come--the poor, solitary, forsaken remains of self, that can
resist nothing. It was my nature to resist, and say, 'I have a right to
resist.' Well, I say so still when I have any strength in me. You have
heard me say it, and I don't withdraw it. But when my strength goes,
some other right forces itself upon me like iron in an inexorable hand;
and even