It was with an inward voice of desperate self-repression that she spoke these last words, while she looked away from Deronda toward something at a distance from her on the floor. She was seeing the whole event--her own acts included--through an exaggerating medium of excitement and horror? Was she in a state of delirium into which there entered a sense of concealment and necessity for self-repression? Such thoughts glanced through Deronda as a sort of hope. But imagine the conflict of feeling that kept him silent. She was bent on confession, and he dreaded hearing her confession. Against his better will he shrank from the task that was laid on him: he wished, and yet rebuked the wish as cowardly, that she could bury her secrets in her own bosom. He was not a priest. He dreaded the weight of this woman's soul flung upon his own with imploring dependence. But she spoke again, hurriedly, looking at him,

She spoke these words with quiet, desperate self-repression, looking away from Deronda. Was she exaggerating her own part in the event through horror? Was she in a state of delirium, which made her think some concealment was necessary? Deronda, his feelings torn between hope and fear, kept silent. She was bent on confession, and he dreaded hearing her confess: he wished, and yet rebuked the wish as cowardly, that she could bury her secrets in her own bosom. He was not a priest. But she spoke again, hurriedly-
