row
which has long been secretly buried within it. I married, and
the world before me was a blank, but a blank in which the
spirit of God seemed to me to move as it did in the beginning
of time, on the face of the waters. All was outside then in my
life, inside in my brain in my heart there was nothing but
peace and joy--joy that the sky was bright, and the earth gay
with flowers in the summer, and white with pure snow in the
winter. I _learnt_ what life and love are in the books Henry
gave me. I _felt_ what they were the first time I saw him with
you. I shut the books--I shut my eyes--I was a coward--I was
afraid of my own heart--afraid of the life I saw before me,
till strength was given me to encounter it. I saw that mine
was Leah's and not Rachael's portion, and I prayed for grace
not to shrink from my cup of sorrow. I do not shrink from it
now; but, for Henry's sake, for the sake of my child, I must
struggle with you and with your strange power, and God will be
with me, Ellen, for you seek to put asunder what He has joined
together."

"Alice, Alice, spare me, for I am miserable. Spare me, for
your sorrows are no more like my sorrows than the martyr's
sufferings resemble the dying criminal's agony. Let me hide my
face on your knees--cover me with the them of your garment,
and let the tears that fall on my head plead for me to the God
whom you adore, for they are like those which the angels in
Heaven shed over a sinner who repents. Pray--pray that his
heart may be softened; pray for him, for yourself, for me.
Pray that I may prevail or die; God forgive me, I dare not
die, but I cannot live as I have lived--"

"Ellen, do not talk so wildly. I dare not speak words of hope
or of comfort if you do not cast this weakness from you--if
you do not struggle with a passion begun in sin, and which can
only end in destruction."

"Alice, I swear by all that is most sacred,--I swear it as I
would on my dying bed,--that I do not love your husband; and
that now--"

"Oh, then you have done wickedly! You have never loved him,
and yet you have sought his love, and worked on his feelings,
till his nature, which was kind, has grown fierce; and his
pale cheek has grown paler still. You have never loved him?
and yet you have made him forget every duty and every tie. You
have taken his heart from me, from his child, from his home,
and you value it not. In wantonness you have taken his love
and my happiness away--you have played wi