Yet she did not resist that
conclusion; and so good an analyst was she of her own mind, that even
when in the very act of throwing away these suspicions of his honesty,
she knew in her soul that her love was in successful conflict with an
array of evidence establishing the fact which she disregarded. Then the
consciousness of this inability to cease loving the man whom she could
hardly doubt to be a liar, as well as heartless and mercenary, brought
up to her the strange theory of Paul. The motive which no man or woman
could make or even modify, was the prime spring as well as ruler of the
will, cropping out, to use his own words, from moral, if not also
physical causes, laid when God said, "Let there be light, and there was
light." A deeper thinker than most of her sex, she felt "the sublimity
in terror" of this view of God's ways with man. If she could not resist
the resolution to love Walter, how could he resist the love he bore to
another? The thought shook her to the heart; nor was she less pained
when she reflected on the hapless Paul, with his long-concealed
affection, so pure from the sordidness of a desire for money, that he
would have toiled for her under the flame of the midnight lamp,
continued into the light of the rising sun.
During the night the persistency of her resolution to remain by her past
affection was maintained; yet as it was still merely a persistency
implying the continuance of a foe ready to assert the old rights, she
was so far unhappy that she wanted that composure of mind which consists
in the absence of conflict among one's own thoughts.
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