This thought, of his subtlety and her desire to conceal, made her
suddenly realize their altered relations with a vividness that
frightened her. Where was the beautiful friendship that had been the
comfort, the prop of her bereaved life? It seemed already to have sunk
away into the past. She wondered what was in store for her, if there
were new sorrows being forged for her in the cruel smithy of the great
Ruler, sorrows that would hang like chains about her till she could go
no farther. The Egyptian had said: "What is to come will come, and
what is to go will go, at the time appointed." And Vere had said she
felt as if perhaps there was a cross that must be borne by some one on
the island, by "one of us." Was she, Hermione, picked out to bear that
cross? Surely God mistook the measure of her strength. If He had He
would soon know how feeble she was. When Maurice had died, somehow she
had endured it. She had staggered under the weight laid upon her, but
she had upheld it. But now she was much older, and she felt as if
suffering, instead of strengthening, had weakened her character, as if
she had not much "fight" left in her.
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