ilip, the son
of the bitter enemy of her family, and is attracted to Stephen, the lover
of her cousin Lucy. A long contest is fought out in her life between
attraction and duty; between individual preferences and moral obligations.
The struggle is hard, as when Stephen avows his love, and she replies,--

"Oh, it is difficult--life is very difficult. It seems right to me
sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but, then, such
feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has
made for us--the ties that have made others dependent on us--and would
cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have
been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward
whom--I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes,
love would be a sign two people ought to belong to each other. But I
see--I feel that it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in
life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark
to me, but I see one thing quite clearly--that I must not, cannot seek
my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely
pity, and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live
in me still and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted
by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned."

Against her will she elopes with Stephen, or her departure with him is so
understood; but us soon as she realizes what she has done, her better
nature asserts itself, and she refuses to go on. Stephen pleads that the
natural law which has drawn them together is greater than every other
obligation; but Maggie replies,--

"If we judged in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery
and cruelty. We should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can
ever be formed on earth."

He then asks what is outward faithfulness and constancy without love.
Maggie pleads the better spirit.

"That seems right--at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it is
not right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing
what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing
whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us--whatever would
cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent
on us. If we--if I had been better, nobler, those claims would have
been