102 FAITH AND LOVE. 



duty, but no place in her love, often goaded him to fury. He 

 became distrustful, and the natural selfishness of his nature 

 grew tenfold more exacting. Petty jealousy, and habitual 

 discontent, took possession of the unhappy man. Fretful and 

 morose, he was content only while she was in his presence, 

 while her slightest gayety filled him with suspicion. A tenacity 

 of power, an assertion of claims, an imperceptible legality of 

 mind, so to say, usurped the place of love. She belonged 

 to him by legal bonds, and these should be recognized to the 

 utmost. 



" As the religious impressions of Agnes deepened, she learned 

 to compassionate the deluded man, who had made so fearful a 

 wreck of his peace — who in the bewilderment of fancy, had 

 conjoined his maturity of character to one inexperienced, 

 undeveloped, and altogether unlike his own. She pitied him 

 for having lavished his soul upon one who could not respond 

 to the boon. She ceased to think upon the wrong done to 

 herself; ceased to blame him who had availed himself of her 

 gentleness and ignorance of life to bind her in the fearful bonds 

 that await only the severance of death ; and a nobleness of 

 sacrifice grew upon her. She felt as if called upon to make 

 an atonement for that perversity of nature, that failed to find 

 content where the law directed. 



" She sometimes grew bewildered in the study of herself — 

 feared she might be peculiar ; one too coldly intellectual, too 

 abstractly spiritual for human sympathy — and the restless void 

 of the heart, the wild craving for companionship that so 



