In Bath-
sheba's heated fancy the innocent white countenance
expressed a dim triumphant consciousness of the pain
she was retaliating for her pain with all the merciless
rigour of the Mosaic law: "Burning for burning; wound
for wound: strife for strife.
Bathsheba indulged in contemplations of escape from
her position by immediate death, which thought she,
though it was an inconvenient and awful way, had limits
to its inconvenience and awfulness that could not be
overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless.
Yet even this scheme of extinction by death was out
tamely copying her rival's method without the reasons
which had glorified it in her rival's case. She glided
rapidly up and down the room, as was mostly her habit
hen excited, her hands hanging clasped in front of her,
as she thought and in part expressed in broken words:
O, I hate her, yet I don't mean that I hate her, for
it is grievous and wicked; and yet I hate her a little!
yes, my flesh insists upon hating her, whether my spirit
is willing or no!... If she had only lived, I could
ave been angry and cruel towards her with some justifi-
cation; but to be vindictive towards a poor dead woman
recoils upon myself.
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