not rare, alas! but below it humanity cannot go, when all life ebbs from us, when we stretch out our arms in vain, when there is no God—­nothing but a brazen Moloch, worse than the Satan of theology ten thousand times, because it is dead.  A Satan we might conquer, or at least we should feel the delight of combat in resisting him; but what can we do against this leaden “order of things” which makes our nerves ministers of madness?  Miriam did not know that her misery was partly a London misery, due to the change from fresh air and wholesome living to foul air and unnatural living.  If she had known it, it would not have helped her.  She could not have believed it, for it is the peculiarity of certain physical disorders that their physical character does not appear, and that they disguise themselves under purely mental shapes.  Montgomery, her brother, the desperate outlook in the future, it is true, were real; but her lack of health was the lens which magnified her suffering into hideous dimensions.  The desire to get rid of it by one sudden plunge was strong upon her, and the friendly hand which at the nick of time intervenes in romances did not rescue her.  Nevertheless, she held back and passed on.  Afterwards the thought that she had been close to suicide was for months a new terror.  She was unaware that the distance between us and dreadful crimes is much greater often than it appears to be.  The man who looks on a woman with adulterous desire has already committed adultery in his heart if he be restrained only by force or fear of detection; but if the restraint, although he may not be conscious of it, is self-imposed, he is not guilty.  Nay, even the dread of consequences is a motive of sufficient respectability to make a large difference between the sinfulness of mere lust and that of its fulfilment.  No friendly hand, we say, interrupted her purpose, but she went on her way.  Hardly had she reached the open quay, when there came a peal of thunder.  In London the gradual approach of a thunderstorm working up from a long distance is not perceived, and the suddenness of the roar for a moment startled her.  But from her childhood she had always shown a strange liking to watch a thunderstorm, and, if possible, to be in it.  It was her habit, when others were alarmed and covered their eyes, to go close to the window in order to see the lightning, and once she had been caught actually outside the door peering round the corner, because the strength of the tempest lay in that direction.  The rain in an instant came down in torrents, the flashes were incessant, and flamed round the golden cross of St. Paul’s nearly opposite to her.  She took off her bonnet and prayed that she might be struck, and so released with no sin and no pain.  She was not heard; a bolt descended within a few feet of her, blinding her, but it fell upon a crane, passed harmlessly down the chain into a lot of rusty old scrap, and so spent itself.  She remained standing there alone and unnoticed, for the street was swept clear as if by grapeshot of the very few persons who might otherwise have been in it at that hour.  Gradually the tumult ceased, and was succeeded by a steady, dull downpour; Miriam then put on her bonnet and walked home.