it--tried. And I must go on. I can't alter
it."

It was impossible to answer this instantaneously. Her words had
confirmed his conjecture, and the situation of all concerned rose in
swift images before him. His feeling for those who had been thrust out
sanctioned her remorse; he could not try to nullify it, yet his heart
was full of pity for her. But as soon as he could he answered--taking
up her last words--

"That is the bitterest of all--to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.
But if you submitted to that as men submit to maiming or life-long
incurable disease?--and made the unalterable wrong a reason for more
effort toward a good, that may do something to counterbalance the evil?
One who has committed irremediable errors may be scourged by that
consciousness into a higher course than is common. There are many
examples. Feeling what it is to have spoiled one life may well make us
long to save other lives from being spoiled."

"But you have not wronged any one, or spoiled their lives," said
Gwendolen, hastily. "It is only others who have wronged _you_."

Deronda colored slightly, but said immediately--"I suppose our keen
feeling for ourselves might end in giving us a keen feeling for others,
if, when we are suffering acutely, we were to consider that others go
through the same sharp experience. That is a sort of remorse before
commission. Can't you understand that?"

"I think I do--now," said Gwendolen. "But you were right--I _am_
selfish. I have never thought much of any one's feelings, except my
mother's. I have not been fond of people. But what can I do?" she went
on, more quickly. "I must get up in the morning and do what every one
else does. It is all like a dance set beforehand. I seem to see all
that can be--and I am tired and sick of it. And the world is all
confusion to me"--she made a gesture of disgust. "You say I am
ignorant. But what is the good of trying to know more, unless life were
worth more?"

"This good," said Deronda promptly, with a touch of indignant severity,
which he was inclined to encourage as his own safeguard; "life _would_
be worth more to you: some real knowledge would give you an interest in
the world beyond the small drama of personal desires. It is the curse
of your life--forgive me--of so many lives, that all passion is spent
in that narrow round, for want of ideas and sympathies to make a larger
home for it. Is there any single occupation of mind that you care about
with p