that it should open at the tragedy of Othello.  She thought that, if she could be drawn into sympathy with suffering like, but different and apart from her own, it would take her a little out of herself, and might lighten the pressure of her load.  Now Juliet had never read a play of Shakespeare in her life, and knew Othello only after the vulgar interpretation, as the type, that is, of jealousy; but when, in a pause of the vague reverie of feeling which she called thought, a touch of ennui supervening upon suffering, she began to read the play, the condition of her own heart afforded her the insight necessary for descrying more truly the Othello of Shakespeare’s mind.  She wept for Desdemona’s innocence and hard fate; but she pitied more the far harder fate of Othello, and found the death of both a consolation for the trouble their troubles had stirred up in her.

The curate was in the habit of scribbling on his books, and at the end of the play, which left a large blank on the page, had written a few verses:  as she sat dreaming over the tragedy, Juliet almost unconsciously took them in.  They were these: 

  In the hot hell o’
  Jealousy shines Othello—­
  Love in despair,
  An angel in flames! 
  While pure Desdemona
  Waits him alone, a
  Ghost in the air,
  White with his blames.

Becoming suddenly aware of their import, she burst out weeping afresh, but with a very different weeping—­Ah, if it might be so!  Soon then had the repentant Othello, rushing after his wife, explained all, and received easiest pardon:  he had but killed her.  Her Paul would not even do that for her!  He did not love her enough for that.  If she had but thrown herself indeed into the lake, then perhaps—­who could tell!—­she might now be nearer to him than she should ever be in this world.

All the time, Dorothy was much and vainly exercised as to what might become possible for the bringing of them together again.  But it was not as if any misunderstanding had arisen between them:  such a difficulty might any moment be removed by an explanation.  The thing that divided them was the original misunderstanding, which lies, deep and black as the pit, between every soul and the soul next it, where self and not God is the final thought.  The gulf is forever crossed by “bright shoots of everlastingness,” the lightnings of involuntary affection; but nothing less than the willed love of an infinite devotion will serve to close it; any moment it may be lighted up from beneath, and the horrible distance between them be laid bare.  Into this gulf it was that, with absolute gift of himself, the Lord, doing like his Father, cast Himself; and by such devotion alone can His disciples become fellow-workers with Him, help to slay the evil self in the world, and rouse the holy self to like sacrifice, that the true, the eternal life of men, may arise jubilant and crowned.  Then is the old man of claims and rights and disputes and fears, re-born a child whose are all things and who claims and fears nothing.