us when we are preoccupied with our own trouble or our
own purposes. We diffuse our feeling over others, and count on their
acting from our motives. Her imagination had not been turned to a
future union with Deronda by any other than the spiritual tie which had
been continually strengthening; but also it had not been turned toward
a future separation from him. Love-making and marriage--how could they
now be the imagery in which poor Gwendolen's deepest attachment could
spontaneously clothe itself? Mighty Love had laid his hand upon her;
but what had he demanded of her? Acceptance of rebuke--the hard task of
self-change--confession--endurance. If she cried toward him, what then?
She cried as the child cries whose little feet have fallen
backward--cried to be taken by the hand, lest she should lose herself.

The cry pierced Deronda. What position could have been more difficult
for a man full of tenderness, yet with clear foresight? He was the only
creature who knew the real nature of Gwendolen's trouble: to withdraw
himself from any appeal of hers would be to consign her to a dangerous
loneliness. He could not reconcile himself to the cruelty of apparently
rejecting her dependence on him; and yet in the nearer or farther
distance he saw a coming wrench, which all present strengthening of
their bond would make the harder.

He was obliged to risk that. He went once and again to Park Lane before
Gwendolen left; but their interviews were in the presence of Mrs.
Davilow, and were therefore less agitating. Gwendolen, since she had
determined to accept her income, had conceived a project which she
liked to speak of: it was, to place her mother and sisters with herself
in Offendene again, and, as she said, piece back her life unto that
time when they first went there, and when everything was happiness
about her, only she did not know it. The idea had been mentioned to Sir
Hugo, who was going to exert himself about the letting of Gadsmere for
a rent which would more than pay the rent of Offendene. All this was
told to Deronda, who willingly dwelt on a subject that seemed to give
some soothing occupation to Gwendolen. He said nothing and she asked
nothing, of what chiefly occupied himself. Her mind was fixed on his
coming to Diplow before the autumn was over; and she no more thought of
the Lapidoths--the little Jewess and her brother--as likely to make a
difference in her destiny, than of the fermenting political and social
leaven