Sister Helen,
And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow.’
‘Let it turn whiter than winter snow,
Little brother!’
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven!)”
It is not until too late that Helen learns that by seeking revenge for her own sorrow she has only doubled the sin. Absorbed in her own heart’s bitterness, she cannot know that the only anger worthy to play a part in the divine retribution is that which burns not so much for the sin against self as for the sin against love; which draws from the smart of personal injury a righteous indignation for others’ wrongs, a profound and passionate pity for fellow-victims of a too common evil, a too familiar grief. But in Helen’s vengeance lies her own despair:
“‘Ah! what white thing at the door has crossed,
Sister Helen?
Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?’