me upon her heart
till the last coldness stayed its heating. A second love appeared to her
self-contradicted; to transfer to another those thoughts which had
wedded her soul to Wilfrid's would not merely be sin, it was an
impossibility. Did he ever cease to cherish her--a thought at which she
smiled in her proud confidence--that could in nothing affect her love
for him, which was not otherwise to be expressed than as the sum of her
consciousness....

The pale light of dawn began to glimmer through the window-blind. Emily
gave it full admission, and looked out at the morning sky; faintest blue
was growing between streaks of cold grey. Her eyes ached from the
fixedness of intense thought; the sweet broad brow was marble, the
disorder of her hair spoke of self-abandonment in anguish. She had no
thought of seeking rest; very far from her was sleep and the blessedness
of oblivion. She felt as though sleep would never come again.

But she knew what lay before her; doubt was gone, and there only
remained fear to shake her heart. A day and a night had to be lived
through before she could know her fate, so long must she suffer things
not to be uttered. A day and a night, and then, perchance--nay,
certainly--the vanguard of a vast army of pain-stricken hours. There was
no passion now in her thought of Wilfrid; her love had become the
sternness of resolve which dreads itself. An hour ago her heart had been
pierced with self-pity in thinking that she should suffer thus so far
away from him, without the possibility of his aid, her suffering
undreamt by him. Now, in her reviving strength, she had something of the
martyr's joy. If the worst came, if she had spoken to him her last word
of tenderness, the more reason that her soul should keep unsullied the
image of that bliss which was the crown of life. His and his only, his
in the rapture of ideal love, his whilst her tongue could speak, her
heart conceive, his name.

CHAPTER XII

THE FINAL INTERVIEW

On six days of the week, Mrs. Hood, to do her justice, made no show of
piety to the powers whose ordering of life her tongue incessantly
accused; if her mode of Sabbatical observance was bitter, the
explanation was to be sought in the mere force of habit dating from
childhood, and had, indeed, a pathetic significance to one sufficiently
disengaged from the sphere of her acerbity to be able to judge fairly
such manifestations of character. A rigid veto upon all things secula