“I shall be,” she said, “a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude.  To be constantly, lovingly grateful for this gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one’s mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet.”

Mr. Cross and George Eliot were married, May 6, 1880, a year and a half after Mr. Lewes’ death, his son Charles giving her away, and went at once to Italy.  She wrote:  “Marriage has seemed to restore me to my old self....  To feel daily the loveliness of a nature close to me, and to feel grateful for it, is the fountain of tenderness and strength to endure.”  Having passed through a severe illness, she wrote to a friend:  “I have been cared for by something much better than angelic tenderness....  If it is any good for me that my life has been prolonged till now, I believe it is owing to this miraculous affection that has chosen to watch over me.”

She did not forget Mr. Lewes.  In looking upon the Grande Chartreuse, she said, “I would still give up my own life willingly, if he could have the happiness instead of me.”

On their return to London, they made their winter home at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a plain brick house.  The days were gliding by happily.  George Eliot was interested as ever in all great subjects, giving five hundred dollars for woman’s higher education at Girton College, and helping many a struggling author, or providing for some poor friend of early times who was proud to be remembered.

She and Mr. Cross began their reading for the day with the Bible, she especially enjoying Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul’s Epistles.  Then they read Max Muller’s works, Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, and whatever was best in English, French, and German literature.  Milton she called her demigod.  Her husband says she had “a limitless persistency in application.”  Her health was better, and she gave promise of doing more great work.  When urged to write her autobiography, she said, half sighing and half smiling:  “The only thing I should care much to dwell on would be the absolute despair I suffered from, of ever being able to achieve anything.  No one could ever have felt greater despair, and a knowledge of this might be a help to some other struggler.”

Friday afternoon, Dec. 17, she went to see Agamemnon performed in Greek by Oxford students, and the next afternoon to a concert at St. James Hall.  She took cold, and on Monday was treated for sore throat.  On Wednesday evening the doctors came, and she whispered to her husband, “Tell them I have great pain in the left side.”  This was the last word.  She died with every faculty bright, and her heart responsive to all noble things.

She loved knowledge to the end.  She said, “My constant groan is that I must leave so much of the greatest writing which the centuries have sifted for me, unread for want of time.”

She had the broadest charity for those whose views differed from hers.  She said, “The best lesson of tolerance we have to learn, is to tolerate intolerance.”  She hoped for and “looked forward to the time when the impulse to help our fellows shall be as immediate and as irresistible as that which I feel to grasp something firm if I am falling.”