ctions your dykes which the flood is invading: the material
existence of this society of yours absorbs all your cares, and
requires more than all your efforts. Meanwhile the powers of human
thought are growing into strength and rise on all sides around you.
Among these threatening apparitions there are some which fade away
and re-enter the darkness, because the hour of life has not yet
struck, and the fiery spirit which quickened them could strive no
longer with the horrors of the present chaos; but there are others
that can wait, and you will find them confronting you, up and
alive, to say, 'You have allowed the death of our brethren, and we,
we do not mean to die.'"

But she rises after a while out of her depths of passionate contention
with a world out of joint, with the reign of stupidity and the tyranny
of convention, into serener heights; and in her later books she gives us
exquisite pictures of nature, with which she has the closest sympathy;
lovely stories of rural life and gentle tales of perfectly pure love.
Her passionate resentment against the world has worn itself out, and she
is calmer, wiser now. Her daughter, too, Solange, has grown to be a
woman and has a lover of her own, and the household thoughts and cares,
and the tenderness of a serious and unselfish cast which creep into a
mother's heart upon such occasions, shed their sweetness upon this
wayward soul, and inspire it with congenial utterances. Now she looks
back and says:--

"My poor children, my own flesh and blood, will perhaps turn upon
me and say: 'You are leading us wrong; you mean to ruin us as well
as yourself. Are you not unhappy, reprobated, evil spoken of? What
have you gained by these unequal struggles, by these much-trumpeted
duels of yours with Custom and Belief? Let us do as others do; let
us get what is to be got from this easy and tolerant world.' This
is what they will say to me. Or at best, if, out of tenderness for
me, or from their own natural disposition, they give ear to my
words and believe me, whither should I guide them? Into what
abysses shall we go and plunge ourselves, we three? for we shall be
our own three upon earth, and not one soul with us. What shall I
reply to them, if they come and say to me: 'Yes, life is unbearable
in a world like this. Let us die together. Show us the path of
Bernica, or th