of her own desires, of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole.  She read on and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength; returning to it after she had been called away, and reading until the sun went down behind the willows.  With all the hurry of an imagination that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devotedness, and, in the ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrance into that satisfaction which she had so long been craving in vain.  She had not perceived—­how could she until she had lived longer?—­the inmost truth of the old monk’s outpourings, that renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.  Maggie was still panting for happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had found the key to it.  She knew nothing of doctrines and systems—­of mysticism or quietism; but this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct communication of a human soul’s belief and experience, and came to Maggie as an unquestioned message.  I suppose that is the reason why the small, old-fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness, while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before.  It was written down by a hand that waited for the heart’s promptings; it is the chronicle of a solitary hidden anguish, struggle, trust and triumph,—­not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding feet on the stones.  And so it remains to all time a lasting record of human needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt, and suffered, and renounced,—­in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours,—­but under the same silent, far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness. [Footnote:  The Mill on the Floss, Book IV., chapter III.]

Life now has a meaning for Maggie, its secret has been in some measure opened.  Only by bitter experiences does she at last learn the full meaning of that word; but all her after-life is told for us in order that the depth and breadth and height of that meaning may be unfolded.  Very soon Maggie is heard saying,

    “Our life is determined for us—­and it makes the mind very free when we
    give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and
    doing what is given us to do.”

It is George Eliot who really speaks these words; hers is the thought which inspires them.

Yet Maggie has not learned to give up wishing; and the sorrow, the tragedy of her life comes in consequence.  She is pledged in love to Philip, the son of the bitter enemy of her family, and is attracted to Stephen, the lover of her cousin Lucy.  A long contest is fought out in her life between attraction and duty; between individual preferences and moral obligations.  The struggle is hard, as when Stephen avows his love, and she replies,—­