“I shall be really glad for you to see and hear her,” said Deronda, returning the smile in kind. “Is she as perfect in every thing else as in her music?” “I can’t vouch for that exactly. I have not seen enough of her. But I have seen nothing in her that I could wish to be different. She has had an unhappy life. Her troubles began in early childhood, and she has grown up among very painful surroundings. But I think you will say that no advantages could have given her more grace and truer refinement.” “I wonder what sort of trouble hers were?” “I have not any very precise knowledge. But I know that she was on the brink of drowning herself in despair.” “And what hindered her?” said Gwendolen, quickly, looking at Deronda. “Some ray or other came—which made her feel that she ought to live—that it was good to live,” he answered, quietly. “She is full of piety, and seems capable of submitting to anything when it takes the form of duty.” “Those people are not to be pitied,” said Gwendolen, impatiently. “I have no sympathy with women who are always doing right. I don’t believe in their great sufferings.” Her fingers moved quickly among the edges of the music. “It is true,” said Deronda, “that the consciousness of having done wrong is something deeper, more bitter. I suppose we faulty creatures can never feel so much for the irreproachable as for those who are bruised in the struggle with their own faults. It is a very ancient story, that of the lost sheep—but it comes up afresh every day.” “That is a way of speaking—it is not acted upon, it is not real,” said Gwendolen, bitterly. “You admire Miss Lapidoth because you think her blameless, perfect. And you know you would despise a woman who had done something you thought very wrong.” “That would depend entirely upon her own view of what she had done,” said Deronda. “You would be satisfied if she were very wretched, I suppose,” said Gwendolen, impetuously. “No, not satisfied—full of sorrow for her. It was not a mere way of speaking. I did not mean to say that the finer nature is not more adorable; I meant that those who would be comparatively uninteresting beforehand may become worthier of sympathy when they do something that awakens in them a keen remorse. Lives are enlarged in different ways. I dare say some would never get their eyes opened if it were not for a violent shock from the consequences of their own actions. And when they are suffering in that way one must care for them more than for the comfortably self-satisfied.” Deronda forgot everything but his vision of what Gwendolen’s experience had probably been, and urged by compassion let his eyes and voice express as much interest as they would. Gwendolen had slipped on to the music-stool, and looked up at him with pain in her long eyes, like a wounded animal asking for help. “Are you persuading Mrs. Grandcourt to play to us, Dan?” said Sir Hugo, coming up and putting his hand on Deronda’s shoulder with a gentle, admonitory pinch.