ke one
groping for a key in a dark place. Not a human figure visible, not a
sign of human occupancy on that expanse! Was this then the secret of her
elation? The all-powerful, dreadful God she was at enmity with, whom she
feared and fled from, was not here. He, or his spirit, was where man
inhabited, in cities and other centres of population, where there were
churches and monasteries.

To think this was a veritable relief to her. God was where men
worshipped him, and not here! She hugged the new belief and it made her
bold and defiant. Doubtless, if he is here, she would say, and can read
my thoughts, my horse in his very next gallop will put his foot in a
mole-run, and bring me down and break my neck. Or when yon black cloud
comes over me, if it is a thunder-cloud, the lightning out of it will
strike me dead. If he will but listen to his servant Dunstan this will
surely happen. Was it God or the head shepherd of his sheep, here in
England, who, when I tried to enter the fold, beat me off with his staff
and set his dogs on me so that I was driven away, torn and bleeding, to
hide myself in a solitary place? Would it then be better for me to go
with my cries for mercy to his seat? O no, I could not come to him
there; his doorkeepers would bar the way, and perhaps bring together a
crowd of their people to howl at me--Go away, Murderess, you are not
wanted here!

Now in spite of those moments, or even hours, of elation, during which
her mind would recover its old independence until the sense of freedom
was like an intoxication; when she cried out against God that he was
cruel and unjust in his dealings with his creatures, that he had raised
up and given power to the man who held the rod over her, one who in
God's holy name had committed crimes infinitely greater than hers, and
she refused to submit to him--in spite of it all she could never shake
off the terrible thought that in the end, at God's judgment seat, she
would have to answer for her own dark deeds. She could not be free of
her religion. She was like one who tears a written paper to pieces and
scatters the pieces in anger to see them blown away like snow-flakes on
the wind; who by and by discovers one small fragment clinging to his
garments, and looking at the half a dozen words and half words appearing
on it, adds others from memory or of his own invention. So she with what
was left when she thrust her religion away built for herself a different
one which was y