But that base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival
than to a faithless lover, could have no strength of recurrence
in Dorothea when the dominant spirit of justice within her had once
overcome the tumult and had once shown her the truer measure of things.
All the active thought with which she had before been representing to
herself the trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage union which,
like her own, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles--
all this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power:
it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will
not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said
to her own irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful,
instead of driving her back from effort.
And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose
contact with hers laid an obligation on her as if they had been
suppliants bearing the sacred branch? The objects of her rescue
were not to be sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her.
She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a
throne within her, and rule her errant will. "What should I do--
how should I act now, this very day, if I could clutch my own pain,
and compel it to silence, and think of those three?"
It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was
light piercing into the room.
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