ner when the recoil of his selfishness struck upon the door of
his conscience and roused Don Worm, that he would be true to her
forever. But what did he mean by the words? Did he know? Had they any
sense of which he would not have been ashamed even before the girl
herself? Would such truth as he contemplated make of him her
hiding-place from the wind, her covert from the tempest? He never even
thought whether to marry her or not, never vowed even in his heart not
to marry another. All he could have said was, that at the time he had no
intention of marrying another, and that he had the intention of keeping
her for himself indefinitely, which may be all the notion some people
have of _eternally_. But things went well with them, and they seemed to
themselves, notwithstanding the tears shed by one of them in secret,
only the better for the relation between them.

At length a child was born. The heart of a woman is indeed infinite, but
time, her presence, her thoughts, her hands are finite: she could not
_seem_ so much a lover as before, because she must be a mother now: God
only can think of two things at once. In his enduring selfishness, Faber
felt the child come between them, and reproached her neglect, as he
called it. She answered him gently and reasonably; but now his bonds
began to weary him. She saw it, and in the misery of the waste vision
opening before her eyes, her temper, till now sweet as devoted, began to
change. And yet, while she loved her child the more passionately that
she loved her forebodingly, almost with the love of a woman already
forsaken, she was nearly mad sometimes with her own heart, that she
could not give herself so utterly as before to her idol.

It took but one interview after he had confessed it to himself, to
reveal the fact to her that she had grown a burden to him. He came a
little seldomer, and by degrees which seemed to her terribly rapid, more
and more seldom. He had never recognized duty in his relation to her. I
do not mean that he had not done the effects of duty toward her; love
had as yet prevented the necessity of appeal to the stern daughter of
God. But what love with which our humanity is acquainted can keep
healthy without calling in the aid of Duty? Perfect Love is the mother
of all duties and all virtues, and needs not be admonished of her
children; but not until Love is perfected, may she, casting out Fear,
forget also Duty. And hence are the conditions of such a relation