of theoretic conviction. In that
declaration of his, that the cause of his party was the cause of God's
kingdom, she heard only the ring of egoism. Perhaps such words have
rarely been uttered without that meaner ring in them; yet they are the
implicit formula of all energetic belief. And if such energetic belief,
pursuing a grand and remote end, is often in danger of becoming a
demon-worship, in which the votary lets his son and daughter pass
through the fire with a readiness that hardly looks like sacrifice;
tender fellow-feeling for the nearest has its danger too, and is apt to
be timid and sceptical towards the larger aims without which life cannot
rise into religion. In this way poor Romola was being blinded by her
tears.

No one who has ever known what it is thus to lose faith in a fellow-man
whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the
shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the
sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to
believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common
nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of
the soul are dulled. Romola felt even the springs of her once active
pity drying up, and leaving her to barren egoistic complaining. Had not
_she_ had her sorrows too? And few had cared for her, while she had
cared for many. She had done enough; she had striven after the
impossible, and was weary of this stifling crowded life. She longed for
that repose in mere sensation which she had sometimes dreamed of in the
sultry afternoons of her early girlhood, when she had fancied herself
floating naiad-like in the waters.

The clear waves seemed to invite her: she wished she could lie down to
sleep on them and pass from sleep into death. But Romola could not
directly seek death; the fulness of young life in her forbade that. She
could only wish that death would come.

At the spot where she had paused there was a deep bend in the shore, and
a small boat with a sail was moored there. In her longing to glide over
the waters that were getting golden with the level sun-rays, she thought
of a story which had been one of the things she had loved to dwell on in
Boccaccio, when her father fell asleep and she glided from her stool to
sit on the floor and read the `Decamerone.' It was the story of that
fair Gostanza who in her lovelorn-ness desired to live no longer, but
not hav