elf I am loving. To love him thrice as dearly as I do
would bring me nearer to God. Love I mean, not idolatry--another form of
selfishness."

She prayed to be guided out of the path of snares.

"CAN YOU PRAY? CAN YOU PUT AWAY ALL PROPS OF SELF? THIS IS TRUE
WORSHIP, UNTO WHATSOEVER POWER YOU KNEEL."

This passage out of a favourite book of sentences had virtue to help her
now in putting away the 'props of self.' It helped her for the time. She
could not foresee the contest that was commencing for her.

"LOVE THAT SHRIEKS AT A MORTAL WOUND, AND BLEEDS HUMANLY, WHAT IS HE
BUT A PAGAN GOD, WITH THE PASSIONS OF A PAGAN GOD?"

"Yes," thought Georgiana, meditating, "as different from the Christian
love as a brute from a man!"

She felt that the revolution of the idea of love in her mind (all that
consoled her) was becoming a temptation. Quick in her impulses, she
dismissed it. "I am like a girl!" she said scornfully. "Like a woman"
would not have flattered her. Like what did she strive to be? The
picture of another self was before her--a creature calmly strong,
unruffled, and a refuge to her beloved. It was a steady light through
every wind that blew, save when the heart narrowed; and then it waxed
feeble, and the life in her was hungry for she knew not what.

Georgiana's struggle was to make her great passion eat up all the
others. Sure of the intensity and thoroughness of her love for Merthyr,
she would forecast for herself tasks in his service impossible save to
one sensually dead and therefore spiritually sexless. "My love is
pure," she would say; as if that were the talisman which rendered
it superhuman. She was under the delusion that lovers' love was a
reprehensible egoism. Her heart had never had place for it; and thus her
nature was unconsummated, and the torment of a haunting insufficiency
accompanied her sweetest hours, ready to mislead her in all but very
clearest actions.

She saw, or she divined, much of this struggle; but the vision of it was
fitful, not consecutive. It frightened and harassed without illuminating
her. Now, upon Merthyr's return, she was moved by it just enough to take
his hand and say:--

"We are the same?"

"What can change us?" he replied.

"Or who?" and as she smiled up to him, she was ashamed of her smile.

"Yes, who!" he interjected, by this time quite enlightened. All subtle
feelings are discerned by Welsh eyes when untroubled by any mental
agitation. Brother a