If in one way this was an item of strength, in another it indicated a very real and always menacing weakness.

Having gained that to which her every instinct had directed itself, she made the possession of her bliss an indispensable factor of life; to lose it would be to fall into nether darkness, into despair of good.

So widowed, there would be no support in herself; she knew it, and the knowledge at moments terrified her.

Even her religious convictions, once very real and strong, had become subordinate; her creed--though she durst not confess it--was that of earthly love.

Formerly she had been thrown back on religious emotion as a solace, an anodyne; for that reason the tendencies inherited from her mother had at one time reached a climax of fanaticism.