r have
surveyed him--never have said, "Is he worth living for?" but would have
felt him simply a part of her own life. Now she said bitterly, "It is
his fault, not mine." In the jar of her whole being, Pity was
overthrown. Was it her fault that she had believed in him--had
believed in his worthiness?--And what, exactly, was he?-- She was able
enough to estimate him--she who waited on his glances with trembling,
and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that
she might be petty enough to please him. In such a crisis as this,
some women begin to hate.

The sun was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go down
again, but would send a message to her husband saying that she was not
well and preferred remaining up-stairs. She had never deliberately
allowed her resentment to govern her in this way before, but she
believed now that she could not see him again without telling him the
truth about her feeling, and she must wait till she could do it without
interruption. He might wonder and be hurt at her message. It was good
that he should wonder and be hurt. Her anger said, as anger is apt to
say, that God was with her--that all heaven, though it were crowded
with spirits watching them, must be on her side. She had determined to
ring her bell, when there came a rap at the door.

Mr. Casaubon had sent to say that he would have his dinner in the
library. He wished to be quite alone this evening, being much occupied.

"I shall not dine, then, Tantripp."

"Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?"

"No; I am not well. Get everything ready in my dressing room, but pray
do not disturb me again."

Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the
evening slowly deepened into night. But the struggle changed
continually, as that of a man who begins with a movement towards
striking and ends with conquering his desire to strike. The energy
that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to inspire a
resolved submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself.
That thought with which Dorothea had gone out to meet her husband--her
conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest of all his
work, and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long
without rising beside the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking
at her anger with sad remonstrance. It cost her a litany of pictured
sorrows and of silent cries that she mi