"Oh, why was I ever born?... Why were any men or women ever born? Let me die at once; life is too horrible.... Oh, mistress! Oh, mother! you say you love me; kill me now then; kill me at once, and spare me this life--this terrible life." But Catherine had now steeled her heart. She hardly heard the pitiful pleading. Her soul was filled with a wild enthusiasm as she thought of her long-matured schemes, now so soon to bear fruit. She was possessed with the _idea_ ... she stood there at her full height; a stately figure, with her face illumined by the inspiration, having a nobility, a glory in it, such as even saints and martyrs have worn. Her thoughts were too exalted just then for her to pay heed to the victim at her feet, and she said nothing, offered no consolation. After this wild first burst of anguish had partly passed, another mood seized the girl. She leaped to her feet, and with eyes aflame with hate, and teeth set, exclaimed: "Oh! oh! if there is a God how I hate him--no man, no devil could be as cruel as He is! Why has He made all this misery? Why has He created us at all? He has arranged things so that in order to save mankind from still worse suffering we have to kill innocent children. Oh, mother! we had better all die at once and leave the world to wild beasts." Then her former mood returned again, and she threw herself upon the sofa, weeping bitterly, and her whole body was convulsed with grief and despair. Catherine King had foreseen that such a mental struggle would come to Mary when the "secret of the aim" was put before her clearly for the first time. Her experience in other cases led her to hail this paroxysm as a favourable symptom. All the initiated had to go through this agony when the supreme moment came. This was usually the last, shortest, but fiercest struggle between the old nature and the new--the old nature of religious instincts, Christian sympathies and pities, and the new nature that sought to break through all the tyrannies, to be free of God, of evil and remorse. It was an unnatural contest that would rend the poor spirit that engaged in it until the new nature had gained the victory, then the angel that is with every soul that is born on earth would go away from it and for ever, leaving it alone, without _conscience_, free to carry out without scruple whatsoever _Reason_ should order. So Catherine, familiar with the great crisis through which the girl was passing, said nothing, but quietly left the room, as she knew was the wisest thing to be done, leaving the victim to fight with her agony by herself, and little doubting what the result would be. CHAPTER VIII. LIGHT LOVER. When a man turns his face definitely in that direction, and sets out on his melancholy road to the dogs, he can get over a good deal of ground in two years.