But I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we learn the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experience, often with bruises and gashes incurred in taking things up by the wrong end, and fancying our space wider than it is.

Dinah had never seen Hetty affected in this way before, and, with her usual benignant hopefulness, she trusted it was the stirring of a divine impulse.

She kissed the sobbing thing, and began to cry with her for grateful joy.

But Hetty was simply in that excitable state of mind in which there is no calculating what turn the feelings may take from one moment to another, and for the first time she became irritated under Dinah's caress.

She pushed her away impatiently, and said, with a childish sobbing voice, "Don't talk to me so, Dinah.
Why do you come to frighten me?
I've never done anything to you.