The Wavering Balance
I SAID that Maggie went home that evening from the Red Deeps with a mental flict already begun. You have seen clearly enough in her interview with Philip, what that flict was. Here suddenly ening in the rocky wall which shut in the narrow Valley of Humiliation, where all her prospect was the remote unfathomed sky; and some of the memory-hauntihly delights were no longer out of her reach. She might have books, verse, affe - she might hear tidings of the world from which her mind had not yet lost its sense of exile; and it would be a kio Philip too, who itiable - clearly not happy; and perhaps here portunity indicated for making her mind more worthy of its highest service - perhaps the , pletest devoutness could hardly exist without some width of knowledge: must she always live in this resigned impriso? It was so blameless, so good a thing that there should be friendship between her and Philip; the motives that forbade it were so unreasonable - so unchristian! - But the severe monotonous warning came again and again - that she was losing the simplicity and clearness of her life by admitting a ground of cealment, and that by forsaking the simple rule of renunciation, she was throwing herself uhe seductive guidance of illimitable wants. She thought she had won strength to obey the warning before she allowed herself the week to tureps in the evening to the Red Deeps. But while she was resolved to say an affeate farewell to Philip, how she looked forward to that evening walk iill, fleckered shade of the hollows, away from all that was harsh and unlovely; to the affeate admiring looks that would meet her; to the sense of radeship that childish memories would give to wiser, older talk; to the certainty that Philip would care to hear everything she said, whio one else cared for! It was a half hour that it would be very hard to turn her back upon, with the sehat there would be no other like it. Yet she said what she meant to say: she looked firm as well as sad. `Philip, I have made up my mind - it is right that we should give each other up, ihing but memory. I could not see you without cealment - say, I know what yoing to say - it is another peoples wrong feelings that make cealment necessary - but cealment is bad, however it may be caused: I feel that it would be bad for me, for us both. And then, if our secret were discovered, there would be nothing but misery - dreadful anger - and then we must part after all, and it would be harder, when we were used to seeing each other.
Philips face had flushed and there was a momentary eagerness of expression as if he had been about to resist this decision with all his might. But he trolled himself, and said with assumed ess, `Well, Maggie, if we must part, let us try and fet it for one half hour - let us talk together a little while - for the last time.
He took her hand, and Maggie felt no reason to withdraw it: his quietness made her all the more sure she had given him great pain, and she wao show him how unwillingly she had given it. They walked together hand in hand in silence.
`Let us sit down in this hollohilip, `where we stood the last time. See how the dog-roses have strewed the ground, and spread their opal petals over it!
They sat down at the roots of the slanting ash.
`Ive begun my picture of you among the Scotch firs, Maggie, said Philip, `so you must let me study your face a little, while you stay - since I am not to see it again. P