She then retired to her own chamber, passing in the corridor Amanda, whose room was in the same quarter, with a salute careless from weariness and pre-occupation.
The moment her head was on her pillow the great fight began--on that only battle-field of which all others are but outer types and pictures, upon which the thoughts of the same spirit are the combatants, accusing and excusing one another.
She had done her duty, but what a remorseless thing that duty was! She did not, she could not, repent that she had done it, but her heart WOULD complain that she had had it to do.

To her, as to Hamlet, it was a cursed spite.

She had not yet learned the mystery of her relation to the Eternal, whose nature in his children it is that first shows itself in the feeling of duty.

Her religion had not as yet been shaken, to test whether it was of the things that remain or of those that pass.

It is easy for a simple nature to hold by what it has been taught, so long as out of that faith springs no demand of bitter obedience; but when the very hiding place of life begins to be laid bare under the scalpel of the law, when the heart must forego its love, when conscience seems at war with kindness, and duty at strife with reason, then most good people, let their devotion to what they call their religion be what it may, prove themselves, although generally without recognising the fact, very much of pagans after all.