e direction than many people have yet reached. At the same
time, whoever has not faced about is on the way to a capacity for worse
things than even our enemies would believe of us.

Her very existence seemed to her now at stake. If by his dying act Mr.
Redmain should drive her from under Hesper's roof, what was to become
of her! Durnmelling, too, would then be as certainly closed against
her, and she would be compelled to take a situation, and teach music,
which she hated, and French and German, which gave her no pleasure
apart from certain strata of their literature, to insolent girls whom
she would be constantly wishing to strangle, or stupid little boys who
would bore her to death. Her very soul sickened at the thought--as well
it might; for to have to do such service with such a heart as hers,
must indeed be torment. All hope of marrying Godfrey Wardour would be
gone, of course. Did he but remain uncertain as to the truth or
falsehood of a third part of what Mr. Redmain would record against her,
he would never meet her again!

Since the commencement of this last attack of Mr. Redmain's malady, she
had scarcely slept; and now what Mewks reported rendered her nigh
crazy. For some time she had been generally awake half the night, and
all the last night she had been wandering here and there about the
house, not unfrequently couched where she could hear every motion in
Mr. Redmain's room. Haunted by fear, she in turn haunted her fear. She
could not keep from staring down the throat of the pit. She was a slave
of the morrow, the undefined, awful morrow, ever about to bring forth
no one knows what. That morrow could she but forestall!

If any should think that anxiety and watching must have so wrought on
Sepia that she came to be no longer accountable for her actions, I will
not oppose the kind conclusion. For my own part, until I shall have
seen a man absolutely one with the source of his being, I do not
believe I shall ever have seen a man absolutely sane. What many would
point to as plainest proofs of sanity, I should regard as surest signs
of the contrary.

A sign of my own insanity is it?

Your insanity may be worse than mine, for you are aware of none, and I
with mine do battle. I believe all insanity has moral as well as
physical roots. But enough of this. There are questions we can afford
to leave.

Sepia had got very thin during these trying days. Her great eyes were
larger yet, and filled with a troubled a