ould
she allow him to go unpunished? Should he triumph, as he would do if
she were now to return to the house which she had told him she had
left? She clasped her hands together tightly, and pressed them first
to her bosom and then to her brow, and then again she returned to the
niche from which the fall into the river must be made. Yes, it was very
easy. The plunge might be taken at any moment. Eternity was before her,
and of life there remained to her but the few moments in which she
might cling there and think of what was coming. Surely she need not
begrudge herself a minute or two more of life.

She was very cold, so cold that she pressed herself against the stone
in order that she might save herself from the wind that whistled round
her. But the water would be colder still than the wind, and when once
there she could never again be warm. The chill of the night, and the
blackness of the gulf before her, and the smooth rapid gurgle of the
dark moving mass of waters beneath, were together more horrid to her
imagination than even death itself. Thrice she released herself from
her backward pressure against the stone, in order that she might fall
forward and have done with it, but as often she found herself returning
involuntarily to the protection which still remained to her. It seemed
as though she could not fall. Though she would have thought that
another must have gone directly to destruction if placed where she was
crouching--though she would have trembled with agony to see anyone
perched in such danger--she appeared to be firm fixed. She must jump
forth boldly, or the river would not take her. Ah! what if it were so--
that the saint who stood over her, and whose cross she had so lately
kissed, would not let her perish from beneath his feet? In these
moments her mind wandered in a maze of religious doubts and fears, and
she entertained, unconsciously, enough of doctrinal scepticism to found
a school of freethinkers. Could it be that God would punish her with
everlasting torments because in her agony she was driven to this as her
only mode of relief? Would there be no measuring of her sins against
her sorrows, and no account taken of the simplicity of her life? She
looked up towards heaven, not praying in words, but with a prayer in
her heart. For her there could be no absolution, no final blessing. The
act of her going would be an act of terrible sin. But God would know
all, and would surely take some measure of her