Now giants fought for her.

Between a feeble inclination and a feeble disinclination her dead heart had drifted to and fro.

Now honor, duty, gratitude,--which last with her was a passion,--dragged her one way: love, pity, and remorse another.
Not one of these giants would relax his grasp, and nothing yielded except her vital powers.

Yes; her temper, one of the loveliest Heaven ever gave a human creature, was soured at times.
Was it a wonder?
There lay the man she loved pining for her; cursing her for her cruelty, and alternately praying Heaven to forgive him and to bless her: sighing, at intervals, all the day long, so loud, so deep, so piteously, as if his heart broke with each sigh; and sometimes, for he little knew, poor soul, that any human eye was upon him, casting aside his manhood in his despair, and flinging himself on the very floor, and muffling his head, and sobbing; he a hero.
And here was she pining in secret for him who pined for her?
"I am not a woman at all," said she, who was all woman.

"I am crueller to him than a tiger or any savage creature is to the victim she tears.