CHAPTER LIV.

"The unwilling brain
Feigns often what it would not; and we trust
Imagination with such phantasies
As the tongue dares not fashion into words;
Which have no words, their horror makes them dim
To the mind's eye."
--SHELLEY.


Madonna Pia, whose husband, feeling himself injured by her, took her to
his castle amid the swampy flats of the Maremma and got rid of her there,
makes a pathetic figure in Dante's Purgatory, among the sinners who
repented at the last and desire to be remembered compassionately by their
fellow-countrymen. We know little about the grounds of mutual discontent
between the Siennese couple, but we may infer with some confidence that
the husband had never been a very delightful companion, and that on the
flats of the Maremma his disagreeable manners had a background which threw
them out remarkably; whence in his desire to punish his wife to the
unmost, the nature of things was so far against him that in relieving
himself of her he could not avoid making the relief mutual. And thus,
without any hardness to the poor Tuscan lady, who had her deliverance long
ago, one may feel warranted in thinking of her with a less sympathetic
interest than of the better known Gwendolen who, instead of being
delivered from her errors or earth and cleansed from their effect in
purgatory, is at the very height of her entanglement in those fatal meshes
which are woven within more closely than without, and often make the
inward torture disproportionate to what is discernable as outward cause.

In taking his wife with him on a yachting expedition, Grandcourt had no
intention to get rid of her; on the contrary, he wanted to feel more
securely that she was his to do as he liked with, and to make her feel it
also. Moreover, he was himself very fond of yachting: its dreamy do-
nothing absolutism, unmolested by social demands, suited his disposition,
and he did not in the least regard it as an equivalent for the dreariness
of the Maremma. He had his reasons for carrying Gwendolen out of reach,
but they were not reasons that can seem black in the mere statement. He
suspected a growing spirit of opposition in her, and his feeling about the
sentimental inclination she betrayed for Deronda was what in another man
he would have called jealously. In himself it seemed merely a resolution
to put an end to such foolery as must have been going on in that
prearranged visit of Deronda's which he had divined and interrupted.

And Grandcourt might have pleaded that he was perfectly justified in
taking care that his wife should fulfill the obligations she had accepted.
Her marriage was a contract where all the ostensible advantages were on
her side, and it was only of those advantages that her husband should use
his power to hinder her from any injurious self committal or unsuitable
behavior. He knew quite well that she had not married him--had not
overcome her repugnance to certain facts--out of love to him personally;
he had won her by the rank and luxuries he had to give her, and these she
had got: he had fulfilled his side of the contract.

And Gwendolen, we know, was thoroughly aware of the situation. She could
not excuse herself by saying that there had been a tacit part of the
contract on her side--namely, that she meant to rule and have her own way.
With all her early indulgence in the disposition to dominate, she was not
one of the narrow-brained women who through life regard all their own
selfish demands as rights, and every claim upon themselves as an injury.
She had a root of conscience in her, and the process of purgatory had
begun for her on the green earth: she knew that she had been wrong.

But now enter into the soul of this young creature as she found herself,
with the blue Mediterranean dividing her from the world, on the tiny
plank-island of a yacht, the domain of the husband to whom she felt that
she had sold herself, and had been paid the strict price--nay, paid more
than she had dared to ask in the handsome maintenance of her mother:--the
husband to whom she had sold her truthfulness and sense of justice, so
that he held them throttled into silence, collared and dragged behind him
to witness what he would, without remonstrance.

What had she to complain of? The yacht was of the prettiest; the cabin
fitted up to perfection, smelling of cedar, soft-cushioned, hung with
silk, expanded with mirrors; the crew such as suited an elegant toy, one
of them having even ringlets, as well as a bronze complexion and fine
teeth; and Mr. Lush was not there, for he had taken his way back to
England as soon as he had seen all and everything on board. Moreover,
Gwendolen herself liked the sea: it did not make her ill; and to observe
the rigging of the vessel and forecast the necessary adjustments was a
sort of amusement that might have gratified her activity and enjoyment of
imaginary rule; the weather was fine, and they were coasting southward,
where even the rain-furrowed, heat-cracked clay becomes gem-like with
purple shadows, and where one may float between blue and blue in an open-
eyed dream that the world has done with sorrow.

But what can still that hunger of the heart which sickens the eye for
beauty, and makes sweet-scented ease an oppression? What sort of Moslem
paradise would quiet the terrible fury of moral repulsion and cowed
resistance which, like an eating pain intensifying into torture,
concentrates the mind in that poisonous misery? While Gwendolen, throned
on her cushions at evening, and beholding the glory of sea and sky
softening as if with boundless love around her, was hoping that Grandcourt
in his march up and down was not going to pause near her, not going to
look at her or speak to her, some woman, under a smoky sky, obliged to
consider the price of eggs in arranging her dinner, was listening for the
music of a footstep that would remove all risk from her foretaste of joy;
some couple, bending cheek by cheek, over a bit of work done by the one
and delighted in by the other, were reckoning the earnings that would make
them rich enough for a holiday among the furze and heather.

Had Grandcourt the least conception of what was going on in the breast of
his wife? He conceived that she did not love him; but was that necessary?
She was under his power, and he was not accustomed to soothe himself, as
some cheerfully-disposed persons are, with the conviction that he was very
generally and justly beloved. But what lay quite away from his conception
was, that she could have any special repulsion for him personally. How
could she? He himself knew what personal repulsion was--nobody better; his
mind was much furnished with a sense of what brutes his fellow-creatures
were, both masculine and feminine; what odious familiarities they had,
what smirks, what modes of flourishing their handkerchiefs, what costume,
what lavender water, what bulging eyes, and what foolish notions of making
themselves agreeable by remarks which were not wanted. In this critical
view of mankind there was an affinity between him and Gwendolen before
their marriage, and we know that she had been attractingly wrought upon by
the refined negations he presented to her. Hence he understood her
repulsion for Lush. But how was he to understand or conceive her present
repulsion for Henleigh Grandcourt? Some men bring themselves to believe,
and not merely maintain, the non-existence of an external world; a few
others believe themselves objects of repulsion to a woman without being
told so in plain language. But Grandcourt did not belong to this eccentric
body of thinkers. He had all his life had reason to take a flattering view
of his own attractiveness, and to place himself in fine antithesis to the
men who, he saw at once, must be revolting to a woman of taste. He had no
idea of moral repulsion, and could not have believed, if he had been told
it, that there may be a resentment and disgust which will gradually make
beauty more detestable than ugliness, through exasperation at that outward
virtue in which hateful things can flaunt themselves or find a
supercilious advantage.

How, then, could Grandcourt divine what was going on in Gwendolen's
breast?

For their behavior to each other scandalized no observer--not even the
foreign maid, warranted against sea-sickness; nor Grandcourt's own
experienced valet: still less the picturesque crew, who regarded them as a
model couple in high life. Their companionship consisted chiefly in a
well-bred silence. Grandcourt had no humorous observations at which
Gwendolen could refuse to smile, no chit-chat to make small occasions of
dispute. He was perfectly polite in arranging an additional garment over
her when needful, and in handing her any object that he perceived her to
need, and she could not fall into the vulgarity of accepting or rejecting
such politeness rudely.

Grandcourt put up his telescope and said, "There's a plantation of sugar-
canes at the foot of that rock; should you like to look?"

Gwendolen said, "Yes, please," remembering that she must try and interest
herself in sugar-canes as something outside her personal affairs. Then
Grandcourt would walk up and down and smoke for a long while, pausing
occasionally to point out a sail on the horizon, and at last would seat
himself and look at Gwendolen with his narrow immovable gaze, as if she
were part of the complete yacht; while she, conscious of being looked at
was exerting her ingenuity not to meet his eyes. At dinner he would remark
that the fruit was getting stale, and they must put in somewhere for more;
or, observing that she did not drink the wine, he asked her if she would
like any other kind better. A lady was obliged to respond to these things
suitably; and even if she had not shrunk from quarrelling on other
grounds, quarreling with Grandcourt was impossible; she might as well have
made angry remarks to a dangerous serpent ornamentally coiled in her cabin
without invitation. And what sort of dispute could a woman of any pride
and dignity begin on a yacht?

Grandcourt had intense satisfaction in leading his wife captive after this
fashion; it gave their life on a small scale a royal representation and
publicity in which every thing familiar was got rid of, and every body
must do what was expected of them whatever might be their private protest
--the protest (kept strictly private) adding to the piquancy of despotism.

To Gwendolen, who even in the freedom of her maiden time, had had very
faint glimpses of any heroism or sublimity, the medium that now thrust
itself everywhere before her view was this husband and her relation to
him. The beings closest to us, whether in love or hate, are often
virtually our interpreters of the world, and some feather-headed gentleman
or lady whom in passing we regret to take as legal tender for a human
being, may be acting as a melancholy theory of life in the minds of those
who live with them--like a piece of yellow and wavy glass that distorts
form and makes color an affliction. Their trivial sentences, their petty
standards, their low suspicions, their loveless _ennui_, may be making
somebody else's life no better than a promenade through a pantheon of ugly
idols. Gwendolen had that kind of window before her, affecting the distant
equally with the near. Some unhappy wives are soothed by the possibility
that they may become mothers; but Gwendolen felt that to desire a child
for herself would have been a consenting to the completion of the injury
she had been guilty of. She was reduced to dread lest she should become a
mother. It was not the image of a new sweetly-budding life that came as a
vision of deliverance from the monotony of distaste: it was an image of
another sort. In the irritable, fluctuating stages of despair, gleams of
hope came in the form of some possible accident. To dwell on the benignity
of accident was a refuge from worse temptation.

The embitterment of hatred is often as unaccountable to onlookers as the
growth of devoted love, and it not only seems but is really out of direct
relation with any outward causes to be alleged. Passion is of the nature
of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance which
determines all currents toward itself, and makes the whole life its
tributary. And the intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear, which
compels to silence and drives vehemence into a constructive
vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the detested object,
something like the hidden rites of vengeance with which the persecuted
have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their suffering into
dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of Gwendolen's mind,
but not with soothing effect--rather with the effect of a struggling
terror. Side by side with the dread of her husband had grown the self-
dread, which urged her to flee from the pursuing images wrought by her
pent-up impulse. The vision of her past wrong-doing, and what it had
brought on her, came with a pale ghastly illumination over every imagined
deed that was a rash effort at freedom, such as she had made in her
marriage. Moreover, she had learned to see all her acts through the
impression they would make on Deronda: whatever relief might come to her,
she could not sever it from the judgment of her that would be created in
his mind. Not one word of flattery, of indulgence, of dependence on her
favor, could be fastened on by her in all their intercourse, to weaken his
restraining power over her (in this way Deronda's effort over himself was
repaid); and amid the dreary uncertainties of her spoiled life the
possible remedies that lay in his mind, nay, the remedy that lay in her
feeling for him, made her only hope. He seemed to her a terrible-browed
angel, from whom she could not think of concealing any deed so as to win
an ignorant regard from him: it belonged to the nature of their relation
that she should be truthful, for his power over her had begun in the
raising of a self-discontent which could be satisfied only by genuine
change. But in no concealment had she now any confidence: her vision of
what she had to dread took more decidedly than ever the form of some
fiercely impulsive deed, committed as in a dream that she would
instantaneously wake from to find the effects real though the images had
been false: to find death under her hands, but instead of darkness,
daylight; instead of satisfied hatred, the dismay of guilt; instead of
freedom, the palsy of a new terror--a white dead face from which she was
forever trying to flee and forever held back. She remembered Deronda's
words: they were continually recurring in her thought--

"Turn your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on the idea of
increasing your remorse. * * * Take your fear as a safeguard. It is like
quickness of hearing. It may make consequences passionately present to
you."

And so it was. In Gwendolen's consciousness temptation and dread met and
stared like two pale phantoms, each seeing itself in the other--each
obstructed by its own image; and all the while her fuller self beheld the
apparitions and sobbed for deliverance from them.

Inarticulate prayers, no more definite than a cry, often swept out from
her into the vast silence, unbroken except by her husband's breathing or
the plash of the wave or the creaking of the masts; but if ever she
thought of definite help, it took the form of Deronda's presence and
words, of the sympathy he might have for her, of the direction he might
give her. It was sometimes after a white-lipped fierce-eyed temptation
with murdering fingers had made its demon-visit that these best moments of
inward crying and clinging for rescue would come to her, and she would lie
with wide-open eyes in which the rising tears seemed a blessing, and the
thought, "I will not mind if I can keep from getting wicked," seemed an
answer to the indefinite prayer.

So the days passed, taking with them light breezes beyond and about the
Balearic Isles, and then to Sardinia, and then with gentle change
persuading them northward again toward Corsica. But this floating, gentle-
wafted existence, with its apparently peaceful influences, was becoming as
bad as a nightmare to Gwendolen.

"How long are we to be yachting?" she ventured to ask one day after they
had been touching at Ajaccio, and the mere fact of change in going ashore
had given her a relief from some of the thoughts which seemed now to cling
about the very rigging of the vessel, mix with the air in the red silk
cabin below, and make the smell of the sea odious.

"What else should we do?" said Grandcourt. "I'm not tired of it. I don't
see why we shouldn't stay out any length of time. There's less to bore one
in this way. And where would you go to? I'm sick of foreign places. And we
shall have enough of Ryelands. Would you rather be at Ryeland's?"

"Oh, no," said Gwendolen, indifferently, finding all places alike
undescribable as soon as she imagined herself and her husband in them. "I
only wondered how long you would like this."

"I like yachting longer than anything else," said Grandcourt; "and I had
none last year. I suppose you are beginning to tire of it. Women are so
confoundedly whimsical. They expect everything to give way to them."

"Oh, dear, no!" said Gwendolen, letting out her scorn in a flute-like
tone. "I never expect you to give way."

"Why should I?" said Grandcourt, with his inward voice, looking at her,
and then choosing an orange--for they were at table.

She made up her mind to a length of yatching that she could not see
beyond; but the next day, after a squall which had made her rather ill for
the first time, he came down to her and said--

"There's been the devil's own work in the night. The skipper says we shall
have to stay at Genoa for a week while things are set right."

"Do you mind that?" said Gwendolen, who lay looking very white amidst her
white drapery.

"I should think so. Who wants to be broiling at Genoa?"

"It will be a change," said Gwendolen, made a little incautious by her
languor.

"_I_ don't want any change. Besides, the place is intolerable; and one
can't move along the roads. I shall go out in a boat, as I used to do, and
manage it myself. One can get a few hours every day in that way instead of
striving in a damnable hotel."

Here was a prospect which held hope in it. Gwendolen thought of hours when
she would be alone, since Grandcourt would not want to take her in the
said boat, and in her exultation at this unlooked-for relief, she had
wild, contradictory fancies of what she might do with her freedom--that
"running away" which she had already innumerable times seen to be a worse
evil than any actual endurance, now finding new arguments as an escape
from her worse self. Also, visionary relief on a par with the fancy of a
prisoner that the night wind may blow down the wall of his prison and save
him from desperate devices, insinuated itself as a better alternative,
lawful to wish for.

The fresh current of expectation revived her energies, and enabled her to
take all things with an air of cheerfulness and alacrity that made a
change marked enough to be noticed by her husband. She watched through the
evening lights to the sinking of the moon with less of awed loneliness
than was habitual to her--nay, with a vague impression that in this mighty
frame of things there might be some preparation of rescue for her. Why
not?--since the weather had just been on her side. This possibility of
hoping, after her long fluctuation amid fears, was like a first return of
hunger to the long-languishing patient.

She was waked the next morning by the casting of the anchor in the port of
Genoa--waked from a strangely-mixed dream in which she felt herself
escaping over the Mont Cenis, and wondering to find it warmer even in the
moonlight on the snow, till suddenly she met Deronda, who told her to go
back.

In an hour or so from that dream she actually met Deronda. But is was on
the palatial staircase of the _Italia_, where she was feeling warm in her
light woolen dress and straw hat; and her husband was by her side.

There was a start of surprise in Deronda before he could raise his hat and
pass on. The moment did not seem to favor any closer greeting, and the
circumstances under which they had last parted made him doubtful whether
Grandcourt would be civilly inclined to him.

The doubt might certainly have been changed into a disagreeable certainty,
for Grandcourt on this unaccountable appearance of Deronda at Genoa of all
places, immediately tried to conceive how there could have been an
arrangement between him and Gwendolen. It is true that before they were
well in their rooms, he had seen how difficult it was to shape such an
arrangement with any probability, being too cool-headed to find it at once
easily credible that Gwendolen had not only while in London hastened to
inform Deronda of the yachting project, but had posted a letter to him
from Marseilles or Barcelona, advising him to travel to Genoa in time for
the chance of meeting her there, or of receiving a letter from her telling
of some other destination--all which must have implied a miraculous
foreknowledge in her, and in Deronda a bird-like facility in flying about
and perching idly. Still he was there, and though Grandcourt would not
make a fool of himself by fabrications that others might call
preposterous, he was not, for all that, disposed to admit fully that
Deronda's presence was, so far as Gwendolen was concerned, a mere
accident. It was a disgusting fact; that was enough; and no doubt she was
well pleased. A man out of temper does not wait for proofs before feeling
toward all things animate and inanimate as if they were in a conspiracy
against him, but at once threshes his horse or kicks his dog in
consequence. Grandcourt felt toward Gwendolen and Deronda as if he knew
them to be in a conspiracy against him, and here was an event in league
with them. What he took for clearly certain--and so far he divined the
truth--was that Gwendolen was now counting on an interview with Deronda
whenever her husband's back was turned.

As he sat taking his coffee at a convenient angle for observing her, he
discerned something which he felt sure was the effect of a secret delight
--some fresh ease in moving and speaking, some peculiar meaning in her
eyes, whatever she looked on. Certainly her troubles had not marred her
beauty. Mrs. Grandcourt was handsomer than Gwendolen Harleth: her grace
and expression were informed by a greater variety of inward experience,
giving new play to her features, new attitudes in movement and repose; her
whole person and air had the nameless something which often makes a woman
more interesting after marriage than before, less confident that all
things are according to her opinion, and yet with less of deer-like
shyness--more fully a human being.

This morning the benefits of the voyage seemed to be suddenly revealing
themselves in a new elasticity of mien. As she rose from the table and put
her two heavily-jewelled hands on each side of her neck, according to her
wont, she had no art to conceal that sort of joyous expectation which
makes the present more bearable than usual, just as when a man means to go
out he finds it easier to be amiable to the family for a quarter of an
hour beforehand. It is not impossible that a terrier whose pleasure was
concerned would perceive those amiable signs and know their meaning--know
why his master stood in a peculiar way, talked with alacrity, and even had
a peculiar gleam in his eye, so that on the least movement toward the
door, the terrier would scuttle to be in time. And, in dog fashion,
Grandcourt discerned the signs of Gwendolen's expectation, interpreting
them with the narrow correctness which leaves a world of unknown feeling
behind.

"A--just ring, please, and tell Gibbs to order some dinner for us at
three," said Grandcourt, as he too rose, took out a cigar, and then
stretched his hand toward the hat that lay near. "I'm going to send Angus
to find a little sailing-boat for us to go out in; one that I can manage,
with you at the tiller. It's uncommonly pleasant these fine evenings--the
least boring of anything we can do."

Gwendolen turned cold. There was not only the cruel disappointment; there
was the immediate conviction that her husband had determined to take her
because he would not leave her out of his sight; and probably this dual
solitude in a boat was the more attractive to him because it would be
wearisome to her. They were not on the plank-island; she felt it the more
possible to begin a contest. But the gleaming content had died out of her.
There was a change in her like that of a glacier after sunset.

"I would rather not go in the boat," she said. "Take some one else with
you."

"Very well; if you don't go, I shall not go," said Grandcourt. "We shall
stay suffocating here, that's all."

"I can't bear to go in a boat," said Gwendolen, angrily.

"That is a sudden change," said Grandcourt, with a slight sneer. "But,
since you decline, we shall stay indoors."

He laid down his hat again, lit his cigar, and walked up and down the
room, pausing now and then to look out of the windows. Gwendolen's temper
told her to persist. She knew very well now that Grandcourt would not go
without her; but if he must tyrannize over her, he should not do it
precisely in the way he would choose. She would oblige him to stay in the
hotel. Without speaking again, she passed into the adjoining bedroom and
threw herself into a chair with her anger, seeing no purpose or issue--
only feeling that the wave of evil had rushed back upon her, and dragged
her away from her momentary breathing-place.

Presently Grandcourt came in with his hat on, but threw it off and sat
down sideways on a chair nearly in front of her, saying, in his
superficial drawl--

"Have you come round yet? or do you find it agreeable to be out of temper.
You make things uncommonly pleasant for me."

"Why do you want to make them unpleasant for _me_?" said Gwendolen,
getting helpless again, and feeling the hot tears rise.

"Now, will you be good enough to say what it is you have to complain of?"
said Grandcourt, looking into her eyes, and using his most inward voice.
"Is it that I stay indoors when you stay?"

She could give no answer. The sort of truth that made any excuse for her
anger could not be uttered. In the conflict of despair and humiliation she
began to sob, and the tears rolled down her cheeks--a form of agitation
which she had never shown before in her husband's presence.

"I hope this is useful," said Grandcourt, after a moment or two. "All I
can say is, it's most confoundedly unpleasant. What the devil women can
see in this kind of thing, I don't know. _You_ see something to be got by
it, of course. All I can see is, that we shall be shut up here when we
might have been having a pleasant sail."

"Let us go, then," said Gwendolen, impetuously. "Perhaps we shall be
drowned." She began to sob again.

This extraordinary behavior, which had evidently some relation to Deronda,
gave more definiteness to Grandcourt's conclusions. He drew his chair
quite close in front of her, and said, in a low tone, "Just be quiet and
listen, will you?"

There seemed to be a magical effect in this close vicinity. Gwendolen
shrank and ceased to sob. She kept her eyelids down and clasped her hands
tightly.

"Let us understand each other," said Grandcourt, in the same tone. "I know
very well what this nonsense means. But if you suppose I am going to let
you make a fool of me, just dismiss that notion from your mind. What are
you looking forward to, if you can't behave properly as my wife? There is
disgrace for you, if you like to have it, but I don't know anything else;
and as to Deronda, it's quite clear that he hangs back from you."

"It's all false!" said Gwendolen, bitterly. "You don't in the least
imagine what is in my mind. I have seen enough of the disgrace that comes
in that way. And you had better leave me at liberty to speak with any one
I like. It will be better for you."

"You will allow me to judge of that," said Grandcourt, rising and moving
to a little distance toward the window, but standing there playing with
his whiskers as if he were awaiting something.

Gwendolen's words had so clear and tremendous a meaning for herself that
she thought they must have expressed it to Grandcourt, and had no sooner
uttered them than she dreaded their effect. But his soul was garrisoned
against presentiments and fears: he had the courage and confidence that
belong to domination, and he was at that moment feeling perfectly
satisfied that he held his wife with bit and bridle. By the time they had
been married a year she would cease to be restive. He continued standing
with his air of indifference, till she felt her habitual stifling
consciousness of having an immovable obstruction in her life, like the
nightmare of beholding a single form that serves to arrest all passage
though the wide country lies open.

"What decision have you come to?" he said, presently looking at her. "What
orders shall I give?"

"Oh, let us go," said Gwendolen. The walls had begun to be an
imprisonment, and while there was breath in this man he would have the
mastery over her. His words had the power of thumb-screws and the cold
touch of the rock. To resist was to act like a stupid animal unable to
measure results.

So the boat was ordered. She even went down to the quay again with him to
see it before midday. Grandcourt had recovered perfect quietude of temper,
and had a scornful satisfaction in the attention given by the nautical
groups to the _milord_, owner of the handsome yacht which had just put in
for repairs, and who being an Englishman was naturally so at home on the
sea that he could manage a sail with the same ease that he could manage a
horse. The sort of exultation he had discerned in Gwendolen this morning
she now thought that she discerned in him; and it was true that he had set
his mind on this boating, and carried out his purpose as something that
people might not expect him to do, with the gratified impulse of a strong
will which had nothing better to exert itself upon. He had remarkable
physical courage, and was proud of it--or rather he had a great contempt
for the coarser, bulkier men who generally had less. Moreover, he was
ruling that Gwendolen should go with him.

And when they came down again at five o'clock, equipped for their boating,
the scene was as good as a theatrical representation for all beholders.
This handsome, fair-skinned English couple, manifesting the usual
eccentricity of their nation, both of them proud, pale, and calm, without
a smile on their faces, moving like creatures who were fulfilling a
supernatural destiny--it was a thing to go out and see, a thing to paint.
The husband's chest, back, and arms, showed very well in his close-fitting
dress, and the wife was declared to be a statue.

Some suggestions were proffered concerning a possible change in the
breeze, and the necessary care in putting about, but Grandcourt's manner
made the speakers understand that they were too officious, and that he
knew better than they.

Gwendolen, keeping her impassable air, as they moved away from the strand,
felt her imagination obstinately at work. She was not afraid of any
outward dangers--she was afraid of her own wishes which were taking shapes
possible and impossible, like a cloud of demon-faces. She was afraid of
her own hatred, which under the cold iron touch that had compelled her to-
day had gathered a fierce intensity. As she sat guiding the tiller under
her husband's eyes, doing just what he told her, the strife within her
seemed like her own effort to escape from herself. She clung to the
thought of Deronda: she persuaded herself that he would not go away while
she was there--he knew that she needed help. The sense that he was there
would save her from acting out the evil within. And yet quick, quick, came
images, plans of evil that would come again and seize her in the night,
like furies preparing the deed that they would straightway avenge.

They were taken out of the port and carried eastward by a gentle breeze.
Some clouds tempered the sunlight, and the hour was always deepening
toward the supreme beauty of evening. Sails larger and smaller changed
their aspect like sensitive things, and made a cheerful companionship,
alternately near and far. The grand city shone more vaguely, the mountains
looked out above it, and there was stillness as in an island sanctuary.
Yet suddenly Gwendolen let her hands fall, and said in a scarcely audible
tone, "God help me!"

"What is the matter?" said Grandcourt, not distinguishing the words.

"Oh, nothing," said Gwendolen, rousing herself from her momentary
forgetfulness and resuming the ropes.

"Don't you find this pleasant?" said Grandcourt.

"Very."

"You admit now we couldn't have done anything better?"

"No--I see nothing better. I think we shall go on always, like the Flying
Dutchman," said Gwendolen wildly.

Grandcourt gave her one of his narrow examining glances, and then said,
"If you like, we can go to Spezia in the morning, and let them take us up
there."

"No; I shall like nothing better than this."

"Very well: we'll do the same to-morrow. But we must be turning in soon. I
shall put about."