CHAPTER XLII

JULIANA

The sick night-light burned steadily in Juliana’s chamber.  On a couch, beside her bed, Caroline lay sleeping, tired with a long watch.  Two sentences had been passed on Juliana:  one on her heart:  one on her body:  ‘Thou art not loved’; and, ‘Thou must die.’  The frail passion of her struggle against her destiny was over with her.  Quiet as that quiet which Nature was taking her to, her body reposed.  Calm as the solitary night-light before her open eyes, her spirit was wasting away.  ’If I am not loved, then let me die!’ In such a sense she bowed to her fate.

At an hour like this, watching the round of light on the ceiling, with its narrowing inner rings, a sufferer from whom pain has fled looks back to the shores she is leaving, and would be well with them who walk there.  It is false to imagine that schemers and workers in the dark are destitute of the saving gift of conscience.  They have it, and it is perhaps made livelier in them than with easy people; and therefore, they are imperatively spurred to hoodwink it.  Hence, their self-delusion is deep and endures.  They march to their object, and gaining or losing it, the voice that calls to them is the voice of a blind creature, whom any answer, provided that the answer is ready, will silence.  And at an hour like this, when finally they snatch their minute of sight on the threshold of black night, their souls may compare with yonder shining circle on the ceiling, which, as the light below gasps for air, contracts, and extends but to mingle with the darkness.  They would be nobler, better, boundlessly good to all;—­to those who have injured them to those whom they have injured.  Alas! for any definite deed the limit of their circle is immoveable, and they must act within it.  The trick they have played themselves imprisons them.  Beyond it, they cease to be.

Lying in this utter stillness, Juliana thought of Rose; of her beloved by Evan.  The fever that had left her blood, had left it stagnant, and her thoughts were quite emotionless.  She looked faintly on a far picture.  She saw Rose blooming with pleasures in Elburne House, sliding as a boat borne by the river’s tide to sea, away from her living joy.  The breast of Rose was lucid to her, and in that hour of insight she had clear knowledge of her cousin’s heart; how it scoffed at its base love, and unwittingly betrayed the power on her still, by clinging to the world and what it would give her to fill the void; how externally the lake was untroubled, and a mirror to the passing day; and how within there pressed a flood against an iron dam.  Evan, too, she saw.  The Countess was right in her judgement of Juliana’s love.  Juliana looked very little to his qualities.  She loved him when she thought him guilty, which made her conceive that her love was of a diviner cast than Rose was capable of.  Guilt did not spoil his beauty to her; his gentleness