I may here remark that I had come to the conclusion, from pondering over her case, that until a yet deeper and bitterer resentment than that which she bore to her father was removed, it would be of no use attacking the latter.  For the former kept her in a state of hostility towards her whole race:  with herself at war she had no gentle thoughts, no love for her kind; but ever

“She fed her wound with fresh-renewed bale”

from every hurt that she received from or imagined to be offered her by anything human.  So I had resolved that the next time I had an opportunity of speaking to her, I would make an attempt to probe the evil to its root, though I had but little hope, I confess, of doing any good.  And now when I heard her say, “Hast thou no help for me?” I went near her with the words: 

“God has, indeed, help for His own offspring.  Has He not suffered that He might help?  But you have not yet forgiven.”

When I began to speak, she gave a slight start:  she was far too miserable to be terrified at anything.  Before I had finished, she stood erect on her feet, facing me with the whiteness of her face glimmering through the blackness of the night.

“I ask Him for peace,” she said, “and He sends me more torment.”

And I thought of Ahab when he said, “Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?”

“If we had what we asked for always, we should too often find it was not what we wanted, after all.”

“You will not leave me alone,” she said.  “It is too bad.”

Poor woman!  It was well for her she could pray to God in her trouble; for she could scarcely endure a word from her fellow-man.  She, despairing before God, was fierce as a tigress to her fellow-sinner who would stretch a hand to help her out of the mire, and set her beside him on the rock which he felt firm under his own feet.

“I will not leave you alone, Catherine,” I said, feeling that I must at length assume another tone of speech with her who resisted gentleness.  “Scorn my interference as you will,” I said, “I have yet to give an account of you.  And I have to fear lest my Master should require your blood at my hands.  I did not follow you here, you may well believe me; but I have found you here, and I must speak.”

All this time the wind was roaring overhead.  But in the hollow was stillness, and I was so near her, that I could hear every word she said, although she spoke in a low compressed tone.

“Have you a right to persecute me,” she said, “because I am unhappy?”

“I have a right, and, more than a right, I have a duty to aid your better self against your worse.  You, I fear, are siding with your worse self.”

“You judge me hard.  I have had wrongs that—­”

And here she stopped in a way that let me know she would say no more.

“That you have had wrongs, and bitter wrongs, I do not for a moment doubt.  And him who has done you most wrong, you will not forgive.”