A gulf opened before him, into which his frenzied words fell and disappeared, and from which uprose a voice which changed his being; he became as a child, a child of sixteen, timid and frightened before this maiden with serene brow, this white figure whose inalterable calm was like the cruel impassibility of human justice.

The combat between them had never ceased until this evening, when with a glance she brought him down, as a falcon making his dizzy spirals in the air around his prey causes it to fall stupefied to earth, before carrying it to his eyrie.
We may note within ourselves many a long struggle the end of which is one of our own actions,--struggles which are, as it were, the reverse side of humanity.

This reverse side belongs to God; the obverse side to men.

More than once Seraphita had proved to Wilfrid that she knew this hidden and ever varied side, which is to the majority of men a second being.

Often she said to him in her dove-like voice: "Why all this vehemence ?" when on his way to her he had sworn she should be his.
Wilfrid was, however, strong enough to raise the cry of revolt to which he had given utterance in Monsieur Becker's study.