The peril in which she stood but kindled in her heart a fiery depth of
passion, such as overtopped and tamed the very terrors of her position.
Because she must lose the world to gain her end, that end was exalted,
in her thought, above a hundred worlds. The faculties of her soul,
which, in her time of innocence and indifference, had been dormant--half
alive--now sprang at once into an exalted, fierce vitality. The hour of
evil found Cornelia a creature of far higher powers and more vigorous
development than she could ever, under any other conditions, have
attained. She showed most gloriously and greatly, when illuminated by
that lurid light whose flame was fed by all that was most gentle,
womanly, and sweet within her. She looked nearest to a goddess, when she
needed but one step to be transformed into a demon.
In following out her psychological progress, we have necessarily
outstripped, to some extent, the sober pace of the narrative. It was
about the first of December that rumors began to be circulated in the
village of an approaching ball at Abbie's. It was to be the
grandest--the most complete in all its appointments--of any that ever
had been given there. It was looked upon, in advance, as the great event
of the year.
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