CHAPTER XV.

It had not been continued resentment against Bates that had made Eliza refuse Miss Rexford’s request; it was the memory of the kiss with which he had bade her good-bye.  For two days she had been haunted by this memory, yet disregarded it, but when that night came, disturbed by Sophia’s words, she locked out the world and took the thing to her heart to see of what stuff it was made.

Eliza lived her last interview with Bates over and over again, until she put out her light, and sat by her bedside alone in the darkness, and wondered at herself and at all things, for his farewell was like a lens through which she looked and the proportion of her world was changed.

There is strange fascination in looking at familiar scenes in unfamiliar aspect.  Even little children know this when, from some swinging branch, they turn their heads downwards, and see, not their own field, but fairyland.

Eliza glanced at her past while her sight was yet distorted, it might be, or quickened to clearer vision, by a new pulse of feeling; and, arrested, glanced again and again until she looked clearly, steadily, at the retrospect.  The lonely farm in the hills was again present to her eyes, the old woman, the father now dead, and this man.  Bates, stern and opinionated, who had so constantly tutored her.  Her mind went back, dwelling on details of that home-life; how Bates had ruled, commanded, praised, and chidden, and she had been indifferent to his rule until an hour of fear had turned indifference into hate.  It was very strange to look at it all now, to lay it side by side with a lover’s kiss and this same man her lover.

Perhaps it was a sense of new power that thrilled her so strangely.  It needed no course of reasoning to tell her that she was mistress now, and he slave.  His words had never conveyed it to her, but by this sign she knew it with the same sort of certainty we have that there is life in breath.  She had sought power, but not this power.  Of this dominion she had never dreamed, but she was not so paltry at heart but that it humbled her.  She whispered to herself that she wished this had not been; and yet she knew that to herself she lied, for she would rather have obliterated all else in the universe than the moment in which Bates had said farewell.  The universe held for her, as for everyone, just so much of the high and holy as she had opened her heart to; and, poor girl, her heart had been shut so that this caress of the man whose life had been nearly wrecked by her deed was the highest, holiest thing that had yet found entrance there, and it brought with it into the darkness of her heart, unrecognised but none the less there, the Heaven which is beyond all selfless love, the God who is its source.  Other men might have proffered lavish affection in vain, but in this man’s kiss, coming out of his humiliation and resignation, there breathed the power that moves the world.