I wish to respect you to the uttermost, and I will try to conceive that there is a motive high enough to justify you.

But those last words must be repeated--when time has come to your aid--before I can regard them as final.' He released her hand, and left her....
What was her first sensation, when the door had closed, then the gate without, and Wilfrid in very deed was gone?
Was it hopeless misery, failure, dread foresight of the life which she still must live?
Rather her mood was that of the martyr who has held firm to the last wrench of torture, who feels that agony is overcome and fear of self surpassed.
This possibility had there ever been in Emily, though associating with such variant instincts.

Circumstances had brought the occasion which weighed one part of her nature against the other, and with this result.
You may not judge her coldly; yet it is possible to indicate those points which connect her enthusiasm of sacrifice with the reasonings and emotions of the impartial mind.

In the moment that she heard of her father's self-destruction, she knew that her own destiny was cast; the struggle with desire, with arguments of her self-love, with claims of others, this also she foresaw and measured.

Her resolve came of the interaction of intense feeling, feeling which only process of time could reduce from its morbid predominance, and that idealism which was the keynote of her personality.