ted fancy the innocent white countenance
expressed a dim triumphant consciousness of the pain she was
retaliating for her pain with all the merciless rigour of the Mosaic
law: "Burning for burning; wound for wound: strife for strife."

Bathsheba indulged in contemplations of escape from her position by
immediate death, which, thought she, though it was an inconvenient
and awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that
could not be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless.
Yet even this scheme of extinction by death was but tamely copying
her rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in her
rival's case. She glided rapidly up and down the room, as was mostly
her habit when excited, her hands hanging clasped in front of her, as
she thought and in part expressed in broken words: "O, I hate her,
yet I don't mean that I hate her, for it is grievous and wicked; and
yet I hate her a little! Yes, my flesh insists upon hating her,
whether my spirit is willing or no! ... If she had only lived, I
could have been angry and cruel towards her with some justification;
but to be vindictive towards a poor dead woman recoils upon myself.
O God, have mercy! I am miserable at all this!"

Bathsheba became at this moment so terrified at her own state of mind
that she looked around for some sort of refuge from herself. The
vision of Oak kneeling down that night recurred to her, and with the
imitative instinct which animates women she seized upon the idea,
resolved to kneel, and, if possible, pray. Gabriel had prayed; so
would she.

She knelt beside the coffin, covered her face with her hands, and
for a time the room was silent as a tomb. Whether from a purely
mechanical, or from any other cause, when Bathsheba arose it was with
a quieted spirit, and a regret for the antagonistic instincts which
had seized upon her just before.

In her desire to make atonement she took flowers from a vase by the
window, and began laying them around the dead girl's head. Bathsheba
knew no other way of showing kindness to persons departed than by
giving them flowers. She knew not how long she remained engaged
thus. She forgot time, life, where she was, what she was doing. A
slamming together of the coach-house doors in the yard brought her to
herself again. An instant after, the front door opened and closed,
steps crossed the hall, and her husband appeared at the entrance to
the room, looking in upon h