He did not leave for Cambridge the day, as he had said he would. He deferred his departure a whole week, and during that time he made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, a stious yet implacable man infli one who has offended him. Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he trived to impress me momently with the vi that I ut beyond the pale of his favour.
Not that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness— not that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully in his power to do so. Both by nature and principle, he was superior to the mean gratification of vengeance: he had fiven me for saying I sed him and his love, but he had not fotten the words; and as long as he and I lived he never would fet them. I saw by his look, wheuro me, that they were always written on the air between me and him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in my voice to his ear, and their echo toned every answer he gave me.
He did not abstain from versing with me: he even called me as usual each m to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure Christian, in eving with what skill he could, while ag and speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the spirit of i and approval which had formerly unicated a certain austere charm to his language and mao me, he was iy bee no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument— nothing more.
All this was torture to me—refined, lingering torture. It kept up a slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how—if I were his wife, this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal sce the fai stain of crime. Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. He experieno suffering from estra—no yearning after reciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, they produo more effe him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or metal. To his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat kihan usual: as if afraid that mere ess would not suffitly vince me how pletely I was banished and banned, he added the force of trast; and this I am sure he did not by force, but on principle.
The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the garden about su, and remembering, as I looked at him, that this man, alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we were near relations, I was moved to make a last attempt tain his friendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaning over the little gate; I spoke to the point at once.
「St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let us be friends.」
「I hope we are friends,」 was the unmoved reply; while he still watched the rising of the moon, which he had been plating as I approached.
「No, St. John, we are not friends as we were. You know that.」
「Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish you no ill and all good.」
「I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing any one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more of affe than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere strangers.」