too," said Romola, raising her hands to her brow, and speaking in
a tone of anguish, as if she were being dragged to some torture.
"Father, you may be wrong."

"Ask your conscience, my daughter. You have no vocation such as your
brother had. You are a wife. You seek to break your ties in self-will
and anger, not because the higher life calls upon you to renounce them.
The higher life begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce our own
will to bow before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the
portal of wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. And the symbol of it
hangs before you. That wisdom is the religion of the Cross. And you
stand aloof from it: you are a pagan; you have been taught to say, `I am
as the wise men who lived before the time when the Jew of Nazareth was
crucified.' And that is your wisdom! To be as the dead whose eyes are
closed, and whose ear is deaf to the work of God that has been since
their time. What has your dead wisdom done for you, my daughter? It
has left you without a heart for the neighbours among whom you dwell,
without care for the great work by which Florence is to be regenerated
and the world made holy; it has left you without a share in the Divine
life which quenches the sense of suffering Self in the ardours of an
ever-growing love. And now, when the sword has pierced your soul, you
say, `I will go away; I cannot bear my sorrow.' And you think nothing
of the sorrow and the wrong that are within the walls of the city where
you dwell: you would leave your place empty, when it ought to be filled
with your pity and your labour. If there is wickedness in the streets,
your steps should shine with the light of purity; if there is a cry of
anguish, you, my daughter, because you know the meaning of the cry,
should be there to still it. My beloved daughter, sorrow has come to
teach you a new worship: the sign of it hangs before you."

Romola's mind was still torn by conflict. She foresaw that she should
obey Savonarola and go back: his words had come to her as if they were
an interpretation of that revulsion from self-satisfied ease, and of
that new fellowship with suffering, which had already been awakened in
her. His arresting voice had brought a new condition into her life,
which made it seem impossible to her that she could go on her way as if
she had not heard it; yet she shrank as one who sees the path she must
take, but sees, too, that the hot lava lies there. A