garden, she seated herself; she had need of rest
and of solitude to calm her thoughts. Her sensation was that of having
escaped a danger, the dread of which thrilled in her. Though fear had
been allayed for an interval, it regained its hold upon her towards the
end of the dialogue; the passion she had witnessed was so rude, so
undisciplined, it seemed to expose elementary forces, which, if need be,
would set every constraint at defiance. It was no exaggeration to say
that she did not feel safe in the man's presence. The possibility of
such a feeling had made itself known to her even during the visit to his
house; to find herself suddenly the object of his almost frenzied desire
was to realize how justly her instinct had spoken. This was not love, as
she understood it, but a terrible possession which might find
assuagement in inflicting some fearful harm upon what it affected to
hold dear. The Love of Emily's worship was a spirit of passionate
benignity, of ecstatic calm, holy in renunciations, pure unutterably in
supreme attainment. Her knowledge of life was insufficient to allow her
to deal justly with love as exhibited in Dagworthy; its gross side was
too offensively prominent; her experience gave her no power of rightly
appreciating this struggle of the divine flame in a dense element.
Living, and having ever lived, amid idealisms, she was too subjective in
her interpretation of phenomena so new to her. It would have been easier
for her to judge impartially had she witnessed this passion directed
towards another; addressed to her, in the position she occupied, any
phase of wooing would have been painful; vehemence was nothing less than
abhorrent. Wholly ignorant of Dagworthy's inner life, and misled with
regard to the mere facts of his outward behaviour, it was impossible
that she should discern the most deeply significant features of the love
he expressed so ill, impossible for her to understand that what would be
brutality in another man was in him the working of the very means of
grace, could circumstances have favoured their action. One tribute her
instinct paid to the good which hid itself under so rude a guise; as she
pondered over her fear, analysing it as scrupulously as she always did
those feelings which she felt it behoved her to understand once for all,
she half discovered in it an element which only severe self-judgment
would allow; it seemed to her that the fear was, in an infinitesimal
degree, of hersel