Oh, and besides--besides--it is impossible that he should care so very much. The time is so short--there is so little in her, comparatively, to attract a man of such resource, such attainments, such access to the best things of life. She cannot--in a kind of terror--she _will_ not, believe in her own love-worthiness, in her own power to deal a lasting wound. Then her _own_ claim? Has she any claim, has the poor bounding heart that she cannot silence, do what she will, through all this strenuous debate, no claim to satisfaction, to joy? She locks her hands round her knees, conscious, poor soul, that the worst struggle is _here_, the quickest agony _here_. But she does not waver for an instant. And her weapons are all ready. The inmost soul of her is a fortress well stored, whence at any moment the mere personal craving of the natural man can be met, repulsed, slain. '_Man approacheth so much the nearer unto God the farther he departeth from all earthly comfort._' '_If thou couldst perfectly annihilate thyself and empty thyself of all created love, then should I be constrained to flow into thee with greater abundance of grace._' '_When thou lookest unto the creature the sight of the Creator is withdrawn from thee._' '_Learn in all things to overcome thyself for the love of thy Creator...._' She presses the sentence she has so often meditated in her long solitary walks about the mountains into her heart. And one fragment of George Herbert especially rings in her ears, solemnly, funereally-- 'Thy Saviour sentenced joy!' Ay, sentenced it for ever--the personal craving, the selfish need, that must be filled at any cost. In the silence of the descending night Catherine quietly, with tears, carried out that sentence, and slew her young new-born joy at the feet of the Master. She stayed where she was for a while after this crisis in a kind of bewilderment and stupor, but maintaining a perfect outward tranquillity. Then there was a curious little epilogue. 'It is all over,' she said to herself tenderly. 'But he has taught me so much--he has been so good to me--he is so good! Let me take to my heart some counsel--some word of his, and obey it sacredly--silently--for these days' sake.' Then she fell thinking again, and she remembered their talk about Rose. How often she had pondered it since! In this intense trance of feeling it breaks upon her finally that he is right. May it not be that he with his clearer thought, his wider knowledge of life, has laid his finger on the weak point in her guardianship of her sisters? 'I have tried to stifle her passion,' she thought, 'to push it out of the way as a hindrance. Ought I not rather to have taught her to make of it a step in the ladder--to have moved her to bring her gifts to the altar? Oh, let me take his word for it--be ruled by him in this one thing, once!'