-that
lowest ebb of melancholy self-consciousness. She went back to Emilia,
and, seating herself, studied every line of the girl's face, the soft
texture of her hair, the veining of her eyelids. They were so lovely,
she felt a sort of physical impulse to kiss them, as if they belonged
to some utter stranger, whom she might be nursing in a hospital. Emilia
looked as innocent as when Hope had tended her in the cradle. What is
there, Hope thought, in sleep, in trance, and in death, that removes all
harsh or disturbing impressions, and leaves only the most delicate and
purest traits? Does the mind wander, and does an angel keep its place?
Or is there really no sin but in thought, and are our sleeping thoughts
incapable of sin? Perhaps even when we dream of doing wrong, the dream
comes in a shape so lovely and misleading that we never recognize it for
evil, and it makes no stain. Are our lives ever so pure as our dreams?

This thought somehow smote across her conscience, always so strong, and
stirred it into a kind of spasm of introspection. "How selfish have I,
too, been!" she thought. "I saw only what I wished to see, did only what
I preferred. Loving Philip" (for the sudden self-reproach left her free
to think of him), "I could not see that I was separating him from one
whom he might perhaps have truly loved. If he made me blind, may he
not easily have bewildered her, and have been himself bewildered? How I
tried to force myself upon him, too! Ungenerous, unwomanly! What am I,
that I should judge another?"

She threw herself on her knees at the bedside.

Still Emilia slept, but now she stirred her head in the slightest
possible way, so that a single tress of silken hair slipped from its
companions, and lay across her face. It was a faint sign that the trance
was waning; the slight pressure disturbed her nerves, and her lips
trembled once or twice, as if to relieve themselves of the soft
annoyance. Hope watched her in a vague, distant way, took note of the
minutest motion, yet as if some vast weight hung upon her own limbs
and made all interference impossible. Still there was a fascination of
sympathy in dwelling on that atom of discomfort, that tiny suffering,
which she alone could remove. The very vastness of this tragedy that
hung about the house made it an inexpressible relief to her to turn and
concentrate her thoughts for a moment on this slight distress, so easily
ended.

Strange, by what slender threads our liv