pitiful
over the pains of humanity: she could bear it, for there was something
in her deeper than pain; but alas for those who were not thus upheld!
Her agony drove her to pray for the whole human race, exposed to like
passion with her. The asthmatic choking which so often made Polwarth's
nights a long misery, taught him sympathy with all prisoners and
captives, chiefly with those bound in the bonds of an evil conscience:
to such he held himself specially devoted. They thought little of
bearing pain: to know they had caused it would have been torture. Each,
graciously uncomplaining, was tender over the ailing of the other.

Juliet had not been long with them before she found the garments she had
in her fancy made for them, did not fit them, and she had to devise,
afresh. They were not gnomes, kobolds, goblins, or dwarfs, but a prince
and princess of sweet nobility, who had loved each other in beauty and
strength, and knew that they were each crushed in the shell of a cruel
and mendacious enchantment. How they served each other! The uncle would
just as readily help the niece with her saucepans, as the niece would
help the uncle to find a passage in Shakespeare or a stanza in George
Herbert. And to hear them talk!

For some time Juliet did not understand them, and did not try. She had
not an idea what they were talking about. Then she began to imagine they
must be weak in the brain--a thing not unlikely with such spines as
theirs--and had silly secrets with each other, like children, which they
enjoyed talking about chiefly because none could understand but
themselves. Then she came to fancy it was herself and her affairs they
were talking about, deliberating upon--in some mental if not lingual
gibberish of their own. By and by it began to disclose itself to her,
that the wretched creatures, to mask their misery from themselves, were
actually playing at the kingdom of Heaven, speaking and judging and
concluding of things of this world by quite other laws, other scales,
other weights and measures than those in use in it. Every thing was
turned topsy-turvy in this their game of make-believe. Their religion
was their chief end and interest, and their work their play, as lightly
followed as diligently. What she counted their fancies, they seemed to
count their business; their fancies ran over upon their labor, and made
every day look and feel like a harvest-home, or the eve of a
long-desired journey, for which every preparat