Just as another woman sleeps! Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps Of doubt and horror,--what to say Or think,--this awful secret sway, The potter's power over the clay! Of the same lump (it has been said) For honour and dishonour made, Two sister vessels. Here is one. My cousin Nell is fond of fun, And fond of dress, and change, and praise, So mere a woman in her ways: And if her sweet eyes rich in youth Are like her lips that tell the truth, My cousin Nell is fond of love. And she's the girl I'm proudest of. Who does not prize her, guard her well? The love of change, in cousin Nell, Shall find the best and hold it dear: The unconquered mirth turn quieter Not through her own, through others' woe: The conscious pride of beauty glow Beside another's pride in her. . . . . . . Of the same lump (as it is said), For honour and dishonour made, Two sister vessels. Here is one. It makes a goblin of the sun! For, judging by the two faces, the two characters were originally the same. Yet how terrible the difference now. This woman likes what all women like; his cousin, the girl he most loves in the world, has the very same love of nice dresses, pleasures, praise. There is nothing wrong in liking these things. But in the case of the prostitute all pleasure must turn for her to ashes and bitterness. The pure girl will have in this world all the pretty dresses and pleasures and love that she can wish for; and will never have reason to feel unhappy except when she hears of the unhappiness of somebody else. And it seems a monstrous thing under heaven that such a different destiny should be portioned out to beings at first so much alike as those two women. Even to think of his cousin looking like her, gives him a shudder of pain--not because he cruelly despises the sleeping girl, but because he thinks of what might have happened to his own dearest, under other chances of life. Yet again, who knows what may be in the future, any more than what has been in the past? All this world is change. The fortunate of to-day may be unfortunate in their descendants; the fortunate of long ago were perhaps the ancestors of the miserable of to-day. And everything may in the eternal order of change have to rise and sink alternately. Cousin Nell is to-day a fortunate woman; he, the dreamer at the bed-side of the nameless girl, is a fortunate man. But what might happen to their children? He thinks again of the strange resemblance of the two women, and murmurs: