thought I
should talk to you alone and tell you this--everything I could not tell
you in town; and then I was forced to go out in the boat."

A sob had for the first time risen with the last words, and she sank
back in her chair. The memory of that acute disappointment seemed for
the moment to efface what had come since. Deronda did not look at her,
but he said, insistently--

"And it has all remained in your imagination. It has gone on only in
your thought. To the last the evil temptation has been resisted?"

There was silence. The tears had rolled down her cheeks. She pressed
her handkerchief against them and sat upright. She was summoning her
resolution; and again, leaning a little toward Deronda's ear, she began
in a whisper--

"No, no; I will tell you everything as God knows it. I will tell you no
falsehood; I will tell you the exact truth. What should I do else? I
used to think I could never be wicked. I thought of wicked people as if
they were a long way off me. Since then I have been wicked. I have felt
wicked. And everything has been a punishment to me--all the things I
used to wish for--it is as if they had been made red-hot. The very
daylight has often been a punishment to me. Because--you know--I ought
not to have married. That was the beginning of it. I wronged some one
else. I broke my promise. I meant to get pleasure for myself, and it
all turned to misery. I wanted to make my gain out of another's
loss--you remember?--it was like roulette--and the money burned into
me. And I could not complain. It was as if I had prayed that another
should lose and I should win. And I had won, I knew it all--I knew I
was guilty. When we were on the sea, and I lay awake at night in the
cabin, I sometimes felt that everything I had done lay open without
excuse--nothing was hidden--how could anything be known to me only?--it
was not my own knowledge, it was God's that had entered into me, and
even the stillness--everything held a punishment for me--everything but
you. I always thought that you would not want me to be punished--you
would have tried and helped me to be better. And only thinking of that
helped me. You will not change--you will not want to punish me now?"

Again a sob had risen.

"God forbid!" groaned Deronda. But he sat motionless.

This long wandering with the conscious-stricken one over her past was
difficult to bear, but he dared not again urge her with a question. He
must let her mind follow its o