forget what seem to them our wrong deeds in the loving memories which follow the dead.  Over the grave men forget all that separated them from others, and the living are reconciled to those who can offend them no more.  All that was good and pure and loving is then made to appear, and memory glorifies the one who in life was neglected or hated.  Through death Maggie was restored to her brother, and over her grave came perfect reconciliation with those others from whom she had been alienated.  That renunciation may lead to cruel martyrdoms is what George Eliot means; but she would say it has its lofty recompense in that restoration which death brings, when the individual becomes a part of the spiritual influence which surrounds and guides us all.  For those who can accept such a conclusion as this the unity of the novel may seem complete.

The poetry of Maggie’s nature found itself constantly dragged down to conditions of vulgar prose by the life about her.  That life was prosy and hard because those ideal aims which come from a recognition of the past and its traditions were absent from it.  Maggie tried to overcome them by renunciation, but by renunciation which did not rest on any genuine sorrow and pain.  At last these came, and the real meaning of renunciation was made clear to her.  Her bitter sorrow taught her the great lesson which George Eliot ever strives to inculcate, that what is hard, sorrowful and painful in the world should move us to more and more of compassion and help for our fellows who also find life sad and burdensome.  At the last Maggie learned this greatest of all lessons which life can give us.

She sat quite still far on into the night, with no impulse to, change her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of prayer—­only waiting for the light that would surely come again.  It came with the memories that no passion could long quench:  the long past came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and affection, of faithfulness and resolve.  The words that were marked by the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against the window, and the loud moan and roar of the wind:  “I have received the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me.”

    But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob: 
    “Forgive me, Stephen.  It will pass away.  You will come back to her.”

    She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly
    on the hearth.  To-morrow she would write to him the last word of
    parting.