The fear that the story would follow her wherever she went became an absolute dread with her, and caused her to live alone and without companions, in the midst of people who would gladly have become her warm friends, had she permitted. Her book of “Impressions” reflected the changes which had taken place in the complexion of her mind during these years. Among its entries were the following:— People talk about following a divine law of love, when they wish to excuse their brute impulses and break social and civil codes. No love is sanctioned by God, which shatters human hearts. Fathers are only distantly related to their children; love for the male parent is a matter of education. The devil macadamises all his pavements. A natural child has no place in an unnatural world. When we cannot respect our parents, it is difficult to keep our ideal of God. Love is a mushroom, and lust is its poisonous counterpart. It is a pity that people who despise civilisation should be so uncivil as to stay in it. There is always darkest Africa. The extent of a man’s gallantry depends on the goal. He follows the good woman to the borders of Paradise and leaves her with a polite bow; but he follows the bad woman to the depths of hell. It is easy to trust in God until he permits us to suffer. The dentist seems a skilled benefactor to mankind when we look at his sign from the street. When we sit in his chair he seems a brute, armed with devil’s implements. An anonymous letter is the bastard of a diseased mind. An envious woman is a spark from Purgatory. The consciousness that we have anything to hide from the world stretches a veil between our souls and heaven. We cannot reach up to meet the gaze of God, when we are afraid to meet the eyes of men. It may be all very well for two people to make their own laws, but they have no right to force a third to live by them. Virtue is very secretive about her payments, but the whole world hears of it when vice settles up. We have a sublime contempt for public opinion theoretically so long as it favours us. When it turns against us we suffer intensely from the loss of what we claimed to despise. When the fruit must apologise for the tree, we do not care to save the seed. It is only when God and man have formed a syndicate and agreed upon their laws, that marriage is a safe investment. The love that does not protect its object would better change its name. When we say _of_ people what we would not say _to_ them, we are either liars or cowards. The enmity of some people is the greatest compliment they can pay us. It was in thoughts like these that Joy relieved her heart of some of the bitterness and sorrow which weighed upon it. And day after day she bore about with her the dread of having the story of her mother’s sin known in her new home.