All the past four years trooped by, with their thousand incidents magnified in the sharp, throbbing light of her mind, and at last she knew and saw clearly what was before her, what trials, what duty, and what honour demanded--her honour.
Richard?
Once for all she gently put him away from her into that infinite distance of fine respect which a good woman can feel, who has known what she and Richard had known--and set aside.

But he had made for her so high a standard, that for one to be measured thereby was a severe challenge.
Could Frank come even to that measure?
She dared not try to answer the question.

She feared, she shrank, she grew sick at heart.

She did not reckon with that other thing, that powerful, infinite influence which ties a woman, she knows not how or why, to the man who led her to the world of motherhood.

Through all the wrongs which she may suffer by him, there runs this cable of unhappy attraction, testified to by how many sorrowful lives! But Lali was trying to think it out, not only to feel, and she did not count that subterranean force which must play its part in this new situation in her drama of life.