been happy."

There was silence again before she said with a repressed sob--"You
cannot bear to look at me any more. You think I am too wicked. You do
not believe that I can become any better--worth anything--worthy
enough--I shall always be too wicked to--" The voice broke off helpless.

Deronda's heart was pierced. He turned his eyes on her poor beseeching
face and said, "I believe that you may become worthier than you have
ever yet been--worthy to lead a life that may be a blessing. No evil
dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in,
and make no effort to escape from. You _have_ made efforts--you will go
on making them."

"But you were the beginning of them. You must not forsake me," said
Gwendolen, leaning with her clasped hands on the arm of her chair and
looking at him, while her face bore piteous traces of the
life-experience concentrated in the twenty-four hours--that new
terrible life lying on the other side of the deed which fulfills a
criminal desire. "I will bear any penance. I will lead any life you
tell me. But you must not forsake me. You must be near. If you had been
near me--if I could have said everything to you, I should have been
different. You will not forsake me?"

"It could never be my impulse to forsake you," said Deronda promptly,
with that voice which, like his eyes, had the unintentional effect of
making his ready sympathy seem more personal and special than it really
was. And in that moment he was not himself quite free from a foreboding
of some such self-committing effect. His strong feeling for this
stricken creature could not hinder rushing images of future difficulty.
He continued to meet her appealing eyes as he spoke, but it was with
the painful consciousness that to her ear his words might carry a
promise which one day would seem unfulfilled: he was making an
indefinite promise to an indefinite hope. Anxieties, both immediate and
distant, crowded on his thought, and it was under their influence that,
after a moment's silence, he said--

"I expect Sir Hugh Mallinger to arrive by to-morrow night at least; and
I am not without hope that Mrs. Davilow may shortly follow him. Her
presence will be the greatest comfort to you--it will give you a motive
to save her from unnecessary pain?"

"Yes, yes--I will try. And you will not go away?"

"Not till after Sir Hugo has come."

"But we shall all go to England?"

"As soon as possible," said Deronda, not wish