Book 6 - Chapter 14 - Page 2

could she ever cease
to see before her Lucy and Philip, with their murdered trust and
hopes? Her life with Stephen could have no sacredness; she must
forever sink and wander vaguely, driven by uncertain impulse; for she
had let go the clue of life,--that clue which once in the far-off
years her young need had clutched so strongly. She had renounced all
delights then, before she knew them, before they had come within her
reach. Philip had been right when he told her that she knew nothing of
renunciation; she had thought it was quiet ecstasy; she saw it face to
face now,--that sad, patient, loving strength which holds the clue of
life,--and saw that the thorns were forever pressing on its brow. The
yesterday, which could never be revoked,--if she could have changed it
now for any length of inward silent endurance, she would have bowed
beneath that cross with a sense of rest.

Day break came and the reddening eastern light, while her past life
was grasping her in this way, with that tightening clutch which comes
in the last moments of possible rescue. She could see Stephen now
lying on the deck still fast asleep, and with the sight of him there
came a wave of anguish that found its way in a long-suppressed sob.
The worst bitterness of parting--the thought that urged the sharpest
inward cry for help--was the pain it must give to _him_. But
surmounting everything was the horror at her own possible failure, the
dread lest her conscience should be benumbed again, and not rise to
energy till it was too late. Too late! it was too late already not to
have caused misery; too late for everything, perhaps, but to rush away
from the last act of baseness,--the tasting of joys that were wrung
from crushed hearts.

The sun was rising now, and Maggie started up with the sense that a
day of resistance was beginning for her. Her eyelashes were still wet
with tears, as, with her shawl over her head, she sat looking at the
slowly rounding sun. Something roused Stephen too, and getting up from
his hard bed, he came to sit beside her. The sharp instinct of anxious
love saw something to give him alarm in the very first glance. He had
a hovering dread of some resistance in Maggie's nature that he would
be unable to overcome. He had the uneasy consciousness that he had
robbed her of perfect freedom yesterday; there was too much native
honor in him, for him not to feel that, if her will should recoil, his
conduct would have been odious, and she would have a right to reproach
him.

But Maggie did not feel that right; she was too conscious of fatal
weakness in herself, too full of the tenderness that comes with the
foreseen need for inflicting a wound. She let him take her hand when
he came to sit down beside her,