You may not judge her coldly; yet it is possible to indicate those points which connect her enthusiasm of sacrifice with the reasonings and emotions of the impartial mind.  In the moment that she heard of her father’s self-destruction, she knew that her own destiny was cast; the struggle with desire, with arguments of her self-love, with claims of others, this also she foresaw and measured.  Her resolve came of the interaction of intense feeling, feeling which only process of time could reduce from its morbid predominance, and that idealism which was the keynote of her personality.  It was not that she condemned herself for having refused to pay the price which would have saved her father; she may have done so in her wildest paroxysms of grief, but in the silences which ensued she knew that there is an arbiter above natural affection, and that not with impunity could a life be purchased by the death of a soul.  She had refused; it might be she would still have refused had she foreseen the worst; but could she move on over her father’s body to a life of joy?  Not only did piety forbid it; the compassionate voice of her heart cried against what she deemed such cruelty.  Her father was dead; nothing that she did henceforth would concern him for good or ill; none the less in her eyes was his claim upon her, the claim of one she had tenderly loved calling to her for pity from that desolate grave.  Which of us entirely out-reasons that surviving claim of the beloved dead?  Which of us would, in his purest hour, desire to do so?  She could not save him, but, as she valued her most precious human privileges, she dared not taste the fruits of life of which he was for ever robbed.  Between her and happiness loomed that agonising face, She might disregard it, might close her eyes and press on, might live down the old sacred pity and give herself to absorbing bliss what would be the true value of that she gained?  Nay, it was idle to affect that she had the choice.  She felt that the first memory of that face in the midst of enjoyment would break her heart.  Those last dark hours of his she must live and relive in her own mind.  Dead?  He was dead?  Oh, did not the very tones of his voice linger in the rooms where she sat?  Could she not see him enter, hold to her his hand, bend and kiss her?  Did she not fancy constantly that his foot sounded on the floor above her, up in the bare little room, where she had parted from him unkindly?  Why, death meant but little, for at any moment he was in truth standing by her.  Years of unhappiness, and then to be put aside and forgotten as soon as the heavy clods of earth had fallen upon him?  To think of that was to be driven almost to madness by the impotence of grief.  Rather than allow a joy to tempt her thought, she would cast life from her and be his companion in that narrow home.