Two sentiments divide and inspire the love of all the women of the earth.

Either they devote themselves to suffering, degraded, and criminal beings whom they desire to console, uplift, redeem; or they give themselves to superior men, sublime and strong, whom they adore and seek to comprehend, and by whom they are often annihilated.

You have been degraded, though now you are purified by the fires of repentance, and to-day you are once more noble; but I know myself too feeble to be your equal, and too religious to bow before any power but that On High.

I may refer thus to your life, my friend, for we are in the North, among the clouds, where all things are abstractions." "You stab me, Seraphita, when you speak like this.

It wounds me to hear you apply the dreadful knowledge with which you strip from all things human the properties that time and space and form have given them, and consider them mathematically in the abstract, as geometry treats substances from which it extracts solidity." "Well, I will respect your wishes, Wilfrid.