Furthermore, said her incandescent reason, she had not suspected such art of cunning in Willoughby.  Then might she not be deceived altogether—­might she not have misread him?  Stronger than she had fancied, might he not be likewise more estimable?  The world was favourable to him; he was prized by his friends.

She reviewed him.  It was all in one flash.  It was not much less intentionally favourable than the world’s review and that of his friends, but, beginning with the idea of them, she recollected—­heard Willoughby’s voice pronouncing his opinion of his friends and the world; of Vernon Whitford and Colonel De Craye for example, and of men and women.  An undefined agreement to have the same regard for him as his friends and the world had, provided that he kept at the same distance from her, was the termination of this phase, occupying about a minute in time, and reached through a series of intensely vivid pictures:—­his face, at her petition to be released, lowering behind them for a background and a comment.

“I cannot!  I cannot!” she cried, aloud; and it struck her that her repulsion was a holy warning.  Better be graceless than a loathing wife:  better appear inconsistent.  Why should she not appear such as she was?

Why?  We answer that question usually in angry reliance on certain superb qualities, injured fine qualities of ours undiscovered by the world, not much more than suspected by ourselves, which are still our fortress, where pride sits at home, solitary and impervious as an octogenarian conservative.  But it is not possible to answer it so when the brain is rageing like a pine-torch and the devouring illumination leaves not a spot of our nature covert.  The aspect of her weakness was unrelieved, and frightened her back to her loathing.  From her loathing, as soon as her sensations had quickened to realize it, she was hurled on her weakness.  She was graceless, she was inconsistent, she was volatile, she was unprincipled, she was worse than a prey to wickedness—­capable of it; she was only waiting to be misled.  Nay, the idea of being misled suffused her with languor; for then the battle would be over and she a happy weed of the sea no longer suffering those tugs at the roots, but leaving it to the sea to heave and contend.  She would be like Constantia then:  like her in her fortunes:  never so brave, she feared.

Perhaps very like Constantia in her fortunes!

Poor troubled bodies waking up in the night to behold visually the spectre cast forth from the perplexed machinery inside them, stare at it for a space, till touching consciousness they dive down under the sheets with fish-like alacrity.  Clara looked at her thought, and suddenly headed downward in a crimson gulf.