The rare natures which are in truth ruled by the instinct of renunciation, which find in the mortification of sense a spring of unearthly joy brimming higher with each self-conquest, may experience temptation and relapse, but the former is a new occasion for the arming of the spirit, and the latter speedily leads to a remorse which is the strongest of all incentives to ascetic struggle.  Emily had not upon her the seal of sainthood.  It was certain that at some point of her life asceticism would make irresistible claim upon the strongholds of her imagination; none the less certain that it would be but for a time, that it would prove but a stage in her development.  To her misfortune the occasion presented itself in connection with her strongest native affections, and under circumstances which led her to an irretrievable act.  Had she been brought up in a Roman Catholic country she would doubtless have thrown herself into a convent, finding her stern joy in the thought that no future wavering was possible.  Attempting to make a convent of her own mind, she soon knew too well that her efforts mocked her, that there was in her an instinct stronger than that of renunciation, and that she had condemned herself to a life of futile misery.

Her state of mind for the year following her father’s death was morbid, little differing from madness; and she came at length to understand that.  When time had tempered her anguish, she saw with clear eyes that her acts had been guided by hallucination.  Never would sorrow for her parents cease to abide with her, but sorrow cannot be the sustenance of a life through those years when the mind is strongest and the sensations most vivid.  Had she by her self-mortification done aught to pleasure those dear ones who slept their last sleep?  It had been the predominant feature of her morbid passion to believe that piety demanded such a sacrifice.  Grief may reach such a point that to share the uttermost fate of the beloved one seems blessedness; in Emily’s mind that moment of supreme agony had been protracted till unreasoning desire took to itself the guise of duty.  Duty so represented cannot maintain its sanction when the wounds of nature grow towards healing.

She strove with herself.  The reaction she was experiencing seemed to her a shameful weakness.  Must she cease to know the self-respect which comes of conscious perseverance in a noble effort?  Must she stand self-condemned, an ignoble nature, incapable of anything good and great—­and that, after all her ambitions?  Was she a mere waif, at the mercy of the currents of sense?  Never before had she felt this condemnation of her own spirit.  She had suffered beyond utterance, but ever with a support which kept her from the last despair; of her anguish had come inspiration.  Now she felt herself abandoned of all spiritual good.  She came to loathe her life as a polluted stream.  The image of Wilfrid, the memory of her lost love, these grew to be symbols of her baseness.  It was too much to face those with whom daily duty brought her in contact; surely they must read in her face the degradation of which she was conscious.  As much as possible she kept apart from all, nursing her bitter self-reproach.