Was the old struggle of years before coming back?
Was it all to go over again?
She was worn out.

She had been quiet in these two years: what had gone before she never looked back upon; but it made her thankful for even this stupid quiet.

And now, when she had planned her life, busy, useful, contented, why need God have sent the old thought to taunt her?
A wild, sickening sense of what might have been struggled up: she thrust it down,--she had kept it down all night; the old pain should not come back,--it should not.

She did not think of the love she had given up as a dream, as verse-makers or sham people do; she knew it to be the quick seed of her soul.

She cried for it even now, with all the fierce strength of her nature; it was the best she knew; through it she came nearest to God.