Page:George Eliot and Judaism.djvu/71

whose good opinion she is forced to acknowledge as valuable, and who summons forth all her powers of self-examination by appearing resolutely to deny her any. He is the magnet which guides and holds her, the anchor to which her fragile bark of life is moored. He becomes an integral part of her conscience, the priest to whom she confesses, and before whom she would fain kneel down—the angel upon whom her upward glances are directed. She has given her hand to a man whom she cannot but despise; she has broken the promise which she gave to his discarded victim, that she would never become his; and she repents in nameless sufferings to which this loathed and detested husband subjects her with an inhuman coolness. One thing alone binds her to life—her guiding-star amid the thunder-clouds and her safety in shipwreck—the memory of Deronda. He is her pro-