It was perfectly true. Her
churchgoing was an ointment. It could soothe but not heal her. Sanchia had
a mind. To do wrong by the world because it had seemed right to her was
not to be remedied by doing a right by it now, which to her reasoning
would glare before her as a monstrous sin. She forgot that Senhouse had
also taught her that the great sin of all was insincerity. She could not
have afforded to remember that. All her present desire was to be, as
nearly as she might, what she had been when Jack had seen her first, what
he had found excellent in her and love-worthy--pious, bowing her head in a
fair place, obsequious, obedient to the law. He had loved her, of course,
whatever she did--outraging the law as well as keeping it, loving Nevile,
letting himself go away. She could not remember that. He had loved her
meek; she would be meek. That was what her heart told her; and Morosine,
to serve his own ends, lulled her head with his sophisticated anodynes,
and sent her brain to sleep.
That he should know her story, as he obviously did, was not so
disconcerting to her as it would have been to most young women. Taciturn
as she was, it was not by reason of timidity, but rather that her own
motives seemed too clear to her to be worth stating.
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