“Oh, it is difficult—­life is very difficult.  It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but, then, such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us—­the ties that have made others dependent on us—­and would cut them in two.  If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward whom—­I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign two people ought to belong to each other.  But I see—­I feel that it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in life; some of us must resign love.  Many things are difficult and dark to me, but I see one thing quite clearly—­that I must not, cannot seek my own happiness by sacrificing others.  Love is natural; but surely pity, and faithfulness and memory are natural too.  And they would live in me still and punish me if I did not obey them.  I should be haunted by the suffering I had caused.  Our love would be poisoned.”

Against her will she elopes with Stephen, or her departure with him is so understood; but us soon as she realizes what she has done, her better nature asserts itself, and she refuses to go on.  Stephen pleads that the natural law which has drawn them together is greater than every other obligation; but Maggie replies,—­

    “If we judged in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery
    and cruelty.  We should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can
    ever be formed on earth.”

He then asks what is outward faithfulness and constancy without love.  Maggie pleads the better spirit.

“That seems right—­at first; but when I look further, I’m sure it is not right.  Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves.  They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us—­whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent on us.  If we—­if I had been better, nobler, those claims would have been so strongly present with me—­I should have felt them pressing on my heart so continually, just as they do now in the moments when my conscience is awake, that the opposite feeling would never have grown in me as it has done:  it would have been quenched at once.  I should have prayed for help so earnestly—­I should have rushed away as we rush from hideous danger.  I feel no excuse for myself—­none.  I should never have failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been weak, selfish and hard—­able to think of their pain without a pain to myself that would have destroyed all temptation.  Oh. what is Lucy feeling now?  She believed in me—­she loved me—­she was so good to me!  Think of her!”

She can see no good for herself which is apart from the good of others, no joy which is the means of pain to those she holds dear.  The past has made ties and; memories which no present love or future joy can take away; she must be true to past obligations as well as present inclinations.