ight, but the
bracing mental atmosphere might have dispelled the thick darkness, the
chilling vacuity, and evolved from the discordant elements a questioning
and not easily satisfied soul, but one destined to develop into
strength and nobler uses. But here, she said to herself, there was
nothing. Friendship could not come to her aid--she would have none of
it. No one should study her with curious eyes, to see how she bore her
trials, her losses, the downfall of her pride. Strangers who had glanced
at her with envy in her pretty pony-phaeton, or the magnificent family
barouche, should not smile in triumph as they saw her walking by. As she
had scorned others in her grandeur, so others would rejoice that she had
been brought low. She had seen so much of the narrowness, the petty
spite, the sharp stings of the world, that her sensitive flesh shrank at
every pulse.

She could understand now how high-bred women, when friends and fortune
had flown, had shut themselves in convents. That she would have been
glad to do. Any entire renunciation would have met with her approval.
But to gather up the threads of a commonplace existence, to find joy and
solace in daily duties, to work for others, to even show others how
trials and misfortunes could be borne to the perfect working-out of
nobler aims and uses, was not for her. She had never been trained to any
such purpose. A heathen of the heathens in a Christian country, the
product of fashion, wealth, and so-called refinement.

In the solitude to which she condemned herself, she came to brooding
over a desperate, worldly philosophy. Should she go back, and retrace
her steps, and marry? There were days when she absolutely contested the
ground inch by inch, and almost decided.

Her long rapid walks, generally at night when her brain was wild with
the bitter warfare, had served a useful purpose, and kept her in better
health. But the strain could not last forever. For days she had
alternated between a chilly, stupid languor, and hours when her brain
seemed on fire, when, indeed, she hated the whole world with a bitter,
awful intensity. In this mood she had stolen out for her walk.

And now the outraged soul had burst its bonds, and revelled in a fearful
revenge. All the ache and repression put upon it; all this silent
endurance; all the solitary hours of maddening thought, the wasted
riches, the spurned sympathy, the youth poisoned by false
doctrines,--every secret sin committed ag