She stood gazing for a
moment, afraid to go back into the darkness of her own room;
and then, with a sudden movement, as though urged by some
terror, she turned quickly away, and went swiftly to the open
window. She looked down into the narrow, dark street, dimly
illuminated by an occasional lamp; she looked up to the
starlit space of sky visible above the house-roofs and
chimneys, and neither above nor below did she find any
comfort; for a sudden awful realization of death had come to
her in the darkness and silence, almost too keen and terrible
for our poor little Madelon to bear--each realization, too, a
fresh shock, as with an instinctive shrinking from this new
consciousness of an intolerable weight her mind slipped away
into some more familiar channel, only to be brought rudely
back to this fact, so unfamiliar, and yet the only one for her
now, in this sudden shattering of all her small world of hopes
and joys and affections. And is it not, in truth, terrible,
this _strength_ of facts, when we are, as it were, brought face
to face with them, and held there till we recognise them? No
means of evasion, no hope of appeal from what is, in its very
nature, fixed, unalterable, irrevocable; the sin is committed,
the loved one gone, the friendship broken and dead, and for us
remains the realization in remorse, and heart-breaking, and
despair.
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