She remembered how she had spoken to Brian Kent of the river and of
life. She saw, now, that the river symbolized not only life as a whole,
with its many ever-changing conditions and currents, amid which the
individual must live;--the river symbolized, as truly, the individual
life, with its ever-changing moods and motives,--its ever-varying and
often-conflicting currents of instinct and training,--its infinite
variety of intellectual deeps and shallows,--its gentle places of
spiritual calm,--and its wild and turbulent rapids of dangerous passion.
"What hitherto unsuspected currents in her life-river," she asked
herself, "had carried her so easily into falsehood? What strange forces
were these," she wondered, "that had set her so suddenly against honesty
and truthfulness and law and justice? And this stranger,--this wretched,
haggard-faced, drunken creature, who had been brought by the mysterious
currents of life to her door,--what was there in him that so compelled
her protecting interest? What was it within him, deeply hidden under
the repellent exterior of his being, that had so awakened in her that
strange feeling of possession,--of motherhood?"
It was not strange that, in her mental and spiritual extremity, the dear
old gentlewoman's life-long habit should lead her to kneel beside
the stranger's bed and pray for understanding and guidance.
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