A sob had for the first time risen with the last words, and she sank back in her chair. The memory of that acute disappointment seemed for the moment to efface what had come since. Deronda did not look at her, but he said, insistently-"And it has all remained in your imagination. It has gone on only in your thought. To the last the evil temptation has been resisted?"
There was silence. The tears had rolled down her cheeks. She pressed her handkerchief against them and sat upright. She was summoning her resolution; and again, leaning a little toward Deronda's ear, she began in a whisper-"No, no; I will tell you everything as God knows it. I will tell you no falsehood; I will tell you the exact truth. What should I do else? I used to think I could never be wicked. I thought of wicked people as if they were a long way off me. Since then I have been wicked. I have felt wicked. And everything has been a punishment to me--all the things I used to wish for--it is as if they had been made red-hot. The very daylight has often been a punishment to me. Because--you know--I ought not to have married. That was the beginning of it. I wronged some one else. I broke my promise. I meant to get pleasure for myself, and it all turned to misery. I wanted to make my gain out of another's loss--you remember?--it was like roulette--and the money burned into me. And I could not complain. It was as if I had prayed that another should lose and I should win. And I had won, I knew it all--I knew I was guilty. When we were on the sea, and I lay awake at night in the cabin, I sometimes felt that everything I had done lay open without excuse--nothing was hidden--how could anything be known to me only?--it was not my own knowledge, it was God's that had entered into me, and even the stillness--everything held a punishment for me--everything but you. I always thought that you would not want me to be punished--you would have tried and helped me to be better. And only thinking of that helped me. You will not change--you will not want to punish me now?"
Again a sob had risen.
"God forbid!" groaned Deronda. But he sat motionless.
This long wandering with the conscious-stricken one over her past was difficult to bear, but he dared not again urge her with a question. He must let her mind follow its own need. She unconsciously left intervals in her retrospect, not clearly distinguishing between what she said and what she had only an inward vision of. Her next words came after such an interval.