Then Sabina told herself that there was nothing to keep her where she
was, but her own will, and that no one would really care what became
of her in the wide world; certainly not her mother, who had never
written her so much as a line, nor sent her a message, since they had
parted on the day of the catastrophe; certainly not her brother;
probably not even her sister, whose whole being was absorbed in the
tyrannical government of what she called her soul. Sabina, in her
thoughts, irreverently compared Clementina's soul to a race-horse, and
her sister to a jockey, riding it cruelly with whip and spur to the
goal of salvation, whether it liked it or not.
Sabina rose from her seat by the window, when she thought of liberty,
and she walked up and down her room, driven by something she could not
understand, and yet withheld by something she understood even less.
For it was not fear, nor reflection, nor even common sense nor the
thought of giving pain to any one that hindered her from leaving the
house at such moments. It was not even the memory of the one human
being who had hitherto loved her, and for whom she had felt affection
and gratitude,--one of the nuns at the convent school, a brave, quiet
little lady who made her believe in good. She meant to do no harm if
she were free, and the nun would not really blame her, if she knew the
truth.
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