t new chapel for which Bartles
still waited. Miriam did not like to come upon them, in packing or
unpacking; she had covered them with things which probably would not be
moved until she was again in England.

But the thought of them could not be so satisfactorily hidden. It lay
in a corner of her mind, and many were the new acquisitions heaped upon
it; but in spite of herself she frequently burrowed through all those
accumulations of travel, and sought the thing beneath. Sometimes the
impulse was so harassing, the process so distressful, that she might
have been compared to a murderer who haunts the burial-place of his
victim, and cannot restrain himself from disturbing the earth.

It was by no methodic inquiry, no deliberate reasoning, that Miriam had
set aside her old convictions and ordered her intellectual life on the
new scheme. Of those who are destined to pass beyond the bounds of
dogma, very few indeed do so by the way of studious investigation. How
many of those who abide by inherited faith owe their steadfastness to a
convinced understanding? Convictions, in the proper sense of the word,
Miriam had never possessed; she accepted what she was taught, without
reflecting upon it, and pride subsequently made her stubborn in
consistency. The same pride, aided by the ennui of mental faculties
just becoming self-conscious, and the desires of a heart for the first
time humanly touched, constrained her to turn abruptly from the ideal
she had pursued, and with unforeseen energy begin to qualify herself
for the assertion of new claims. No barriers of logic stood in her way;
it was a simple matter of facing round about. True, she still had to
endure the sense of having chosen the wide way instead of that strait
one which is authoritatively prescribed. It was a long time before she
made any endeavour to justify herself; but the wide way ran through a
country that delighted her, and her progress was so notable that
self-commendation and the respect of others made her careless of the
occasional stings of conscience.

She was able now to review the process of change, and to compare the
two ideals. Without the support of a single argument of logical value,
she stamped all the beliefs of her childhood as superstition, and
marvelled that they had so long held their power over her. Her
childhood, indeed, seemed to her to have lasted until she came to
Naples; with hot shame she reflected on her speech and behaviour at
that time.