" Her voice rose
and became shriller as she went on. "I will not stand it. Who are
you that you should talk to me so?--bad enough to bring me down here
to die, without treating me as if I were an unconverted character.
Oh! if I had but a home to go to!" and she covered her face with her
apron and became hysterical.
What a revelation! By this time he had looked often into the soul of
the woman whom he had chosen--the woman with whom he was to be for
ever in this world--and had discovered that there was nothing,
nothing, absolutely nothing which answered anything in himself with a
smile of recognition; but he now looked again, and found something
worse than emptiness. He found lurking in the obscure darkness a
reptile with cruel fangs which at any moment might turn upon him when
he was at his weakest and least able to defend himself. He had that
in him by nature which would have prompted him to desperate deeds.
He could have flung himself from her with a curse, or even have
killed himself in order to escape from his difficulty. But whatever
there was in him originally had been changed. Upon the wild stem had
been grafted a nobler slip, which drew all its sap from the old root,
but had civilised and sweetened its acrid juices.
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