position. Her
experience since the moment of her waking in the boat had come to her
with as strong an effect as that of the fresh seal on the dissolving
wax. She had felt herself without bonds, without motive; sinking in
mere egoistic complaining that life could bring her no content; feeling
a right to say, "I am tired of life, I want to die." That thought had
sobbed within her as she fell asleep, but from the moment after her
waking when the cry had drawn her, she had not even reflected, as she
used to do in Florence, that she was glad to live because she could
lighten sorrow--she had simply lived, with so energetic an impulse to
share the life around her, to answer the call of need and do the work
which cried aloud to be done, that the reasons for living, enduring,
labouring, never took the form of argument.

The experience was like a new baptism to Romola. In Florence the
simpler relations of the human being to his fellow-men had been
complicated for her with all the special ties of marriage, the State,
and religious discipleship, and when these had disappointed her trust,
the shock seemed to have shaken her aloof from life and stunned her
sympathy. But now she said, "It was mere baseness in me to desire
death. If everything else is doubtful, this suffering that I can help
is certain; if the glory of the cross is an illusion, the sorrow is only
the truer. While the strength is in my arm I will stretch it out to the
fainting; while the light visits my eyes they shall seek the forsaken."

And then the past arose with a fresh appeal to her. Her work in this
green valley was done, and the emotions that were disengaged from the
people immediately around her rushed back into the old deep channels of
use and affection. That rare possibility of self-contemplation which
comes in any complete severance from our wonted life made her judge
herself as she had never done before: the compunction which is
inseparable from a sympathetic nature keenly alive to the possible
experience of others, began to stir in her with growing force. She
questioned the justness of her own conclusions, of her own deeds: she
had been rash, arrogant, always dissatisfied that others were not good
enough, while she herself had not been true to what her soul had once
recognised as the best. She began to condemn her flight: after all, it
had been cowardly self-care; the grounds on which Savonarola had once
taken her back were truer, deeper than