With burning temples, with feverish lips, she moved about her little room like an animal in a cage, finding the length of the day intolerable.  She was constrained to inaction, when it seemed to her that every moment in which she did not do something to keep Sidney in mind of her was worse than lost.  Could she not see that girl, Jane Snowdon?  But was not Sidney’s denial as emphatic as it could be?  She recalled his words, and tried numberless interpretations.  Would anything that he had said bear being interpreted as a sign that something of the old tenderness still lived in him?  And the strange thing was, that she interrogated herself on these points not at all like a coldly scheming woman, who aims at something that is to be won, if at all, by the subtlest practising on another’s emotions, whilst she remains unaffected.  Rather like a woman who loves passionately, whose ardour and jealous dread wax moment by moment.

For what was she scheming?  For food, clothing, assured comfort during her life?  Twenty-four hours ago Clara would most likely have believed that she had indeed fallen to this; but the meeting with Sidney enlightened her.  Least of all women could she live by bread alone; there was the hunger of her brain, the hunger of her heart.  I spoke once, you remember, of her ‘defect of tenderness;’ the fault remained, but her heart was no longer so sterile of the tender emotions as when revolt and ambition absorbed all her energies.  She had begun to feel gently towards her father; it was an intimation of the need which would presently bring all the forces of her nature into play.  She dreaded a life of drudgery; she dreaded humiliation among her inferiors; but that which she feared most of all was the barrenness of a lot into which would enter none of the passionate joys of existence.  Speak to Clara of renunciation, of saintly glories, of the stony way of perfectness, and you addressed her in an unknown tongue; nothing in her responded to these ideas.  Hopelessly defeated in the one way of aspiration which promised a large life, her being, rebellious against the martyrdom it had suffered, went forth eagerly towards the only happiness which was any longer attainable.  Her beauty was a dead thing; never by that means could she command homage.  But there is love, ay, and passionate love, which can be independent of mere charm of face.  In one man only could she hope to inspire it; successful in that, she would taste victory, and even in this fallen estate could make for herself a dominion.

In these few hours she so wrought upon her imagination as to believe that the one love of her life had declared itself.  She revived every memory she possibly could of those years on the far side of the gulf, and convinced herself that even then she had loved Sidney.  Other love of a certainty she had not known.  In standing face to face with him after so long an interval, she recognised the qualities which used to impress her, and appraised them as formerly