by patient industry, and who gloat on their pyramid growing, stone by stone, as if it were a favourite child; who regard forgiveness as a weakness which is contemptible, and regret as an insult to their hellish pride. Jehovah, the jealous and vengeful, is the only possible God of their idolatry. The blue-eyed, fair-haired ones are fond of mirth. No woman ever yet was a humorist, yet some can appreciate humour, and it is the sanguine, blue-eyed ones who do. They may laugh, and vow, and forswear their vows, yet they can weep, and wonder at misery, and, if it lies in their power, banish it by smiles and laughter. The swarthy and melancholy woman keeps her vows, but she has no joy and gives no pleasure in them. She is dark and morbid Fate, whereas the other is tender, inconstant Earth Love, that stays but a night and a day.
She had been beautiful once, and, for a brief space, stoically affectionate and trusting, but her very love had bred snakes of suspicion in her heart. The blessings of the Church were not sufficient to sanctify her transient warmth of feelings. Her stoical nature demanded sacrifices, as the bilious temperament must have brown bread and water in preference to wine and nourishing food. If she partook of pleasure, it was to snatch at it remorsefully and hastily, and then to suffer from the surfeit. She was what the modern woman would call intense, in her morbid awakings and chronic wretchedness.
The Bible lay open before her, for she sat at a table. Its pages opened naturally at the portions she had read mostly from and reverted to, not as a consolation, but rather as caviare to whet her savage instincts. She had dreamt and brooded so long on the fabricless monsters of her fancied wrongs, that the God of vengeance was
