Yet she never entered the painter's study but with
trembling heart, uncertain foot, and fluttering breath, as of one
stepping within the gates of an enchanted paradise, whose joy is
too much for the material weight of humanity to ballast even to the
steadying of the bodily step, and the outward calm of the bodily
carriage. How far things had gone between them we shall be able to
judge by and by; it will be enough at present to add that it was
this relation and the inward strife arising from it that had not
only prematurely, but over rapidly ripened the girl into the woman.
This my disclosure of her condition, however, has not yet uncovered
the sorest spot upon which the flies of Beelzebub settled in the
darkness of this torture hour of the human clock. Although still
the same lively, self operative nature she had been in other
circumstances, she was so far from being insensible or indifferent
to the opinions of others, that she had not even strength enough to
keep a foreign will off the beam of her choice: the will of another,
in no way directly brought to bear on hers, would yet weigh to
her encouragement where her wish was doubtful, or to her restraint
where impulse was strong; it would even move her towards a line
of conduct whose anticipated results were distasteful to her.
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