Then Mrs. Holworthy remembered with a sudden shudder in the retrospect, of her meeting with Mr. Holworthy. Did she love the heavy, phlegmatic young minister who visited at her father’s house so long ago? No, she could see, oh, so clearly now, that she did not, that she had never known love, that she was too young and inexperienced to divine the depths of meaning in that word. She saw she had been somewhat flattered by the attentions of the young minister, that she had been drawn into marriage with him by the assiduous teaching that marriage was woman’s sole sphere, and that marriage with a clergyman was eminently pure and respectable. As she looked back over her married life, she saw that at its very threshold she had been compelled to lay aside all her tastes for art, her aspirations for doing something good and noble in her own way, even her simple enjoyment of her own poor little life, all had been ruthlessly sacrificed. From the day that her first child was born, she had never known an unbroken night’s rest, she had scarcely looked into a book, she had lost the use of her pen and pencil, the cares of breeding had absorbed her whole life, and what had she to show for them? Her children, to be sure; but even these could never compensate her for her ruthless dispossession of all the golden opportunities and innocent cravings of her own nature. As Mrs. Holworthy mused thus over her mutilated past, the beautiful text of Mr. Holworthy’s sermon began to mingle with her thoughts, and to arouse strange questionings in her mind. Could these heathen “neighbours,” whom Mr. Holworthy was seeking so strenuously in the far-off Isles of the Sea, have a more unmitigated slavery than hers had been? However unenlightened they might be, were they not quite as free and happy as she, bound as she had been to bear children for this great man, whether she wanted to or not, whether she was able to or not? Surely, if any one deserved pity and needed succour, it was one whose lot had been like hers. Her head began to feel strangely confused. She repeated Mr. Holworthy’s text to herself, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour.” Beautiful words! What could they mean? It was plain that something had worked ill to her unreconciled life, and therefore it could not be love. No, it was a blinding mistake, a fearful travesty, a hideous misnomer to call it love. “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour,” she repeated till her brain was dizzy.