Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/257

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OF WILDFELL HALL.
247

"'You only regret the past for its consequences to yourself?'

"'Just so—except that I'm sorry to have wronged you Nel, because you're so good to me.'

"'Think of the goodness of God, and you cannot but be grieved to have offended Him.'

"'What is God—I cannot see him or hear Him?—God is only an idea.'

"'God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness—and Love; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties—if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to Heaven even in his glorified human body, in whom the fulness of the godhead shines.'"

But he only shook his head and sighed. Then, in another paroxysm of shuddering horror, he tightened his grasp on my hand and arm, and groaning and lamenting, still clung to me with that wild, desperate earnestness so