is the
saviour of an oppressed, degraded, outcast race, who calls to share his
mission her who could feel the brightness of her joy of love brightened
still more by the hope of assuaging sorrow and redressing evil. It is
the appeal through the father of that which is highest and noblest in
humanity to that which is most deeply inwrought into the daughter's soul.
To a narrower and meaner nature the appeal would have been addressed by
any father in vain: for a narrower and meaner end, the appeal even by
such a father would have been addressed to Fedalma in vain. With her it
cannot but prevail, unless she is content to forego--not merely her
father's love and trust, but--her own deepest and truest life.

The "child of light," the embodied "joy and love and triumph" of the
Placa, is called on to forego all outward and possible hope on behalf of
that love which is for her the concentration of all light and joy and
triumph. Very touching are those heart-wrung pleadings by which she
strives to avert the sacrifice; and we are oppressed almost as by the
presence of the calm, loveless, hateless Fate of the old Greek tragedy,
as Zarca's inexorable logic puts them one by one aside, and leaves her as
sole alternatives the offering up every hope, every present and possible
joy of the love which is entwined with her life, or the turning away from
that highest course to which he calls her. As her own young hopes die
out under the pressure of that deepest energy of her nature to which he
appeals, it can hardly be but that all hope should grow dull and cold
within--hope even with regard to the issue of that mission to which she
is called; and it is thus that she accepts the call:--

"Yes, say that we shall fail. I will not count
On aught but being faithful. . . .
I will seek nothing but to shun base joy.
The saints were cowards who stood by to see
Christ crucified. They should have thrown themselves
Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain.
The grandest death, to die in vain, for love
Greater than rules the courses of the world.
Such death shall be my bridegroom. . . .
Oh love! you were my crown. No other crown
Is aught but thorns on this poor woman's brow."

In this spirit she goes forth to meet her doom, faithfulness thenceforth
the one aim and struggle of her life--faithfulness to be maintained under
the pressure of such anguish of blighted love and stricken hope as only
natures so pure, ten