"All my life," Helen explained, "I have believed myself to be a good woman, a devoted wife and mother, faithful to my duties, charitable, conscientious, God-fearing, self-sacrificing to a fault, and absolutely loyal to my friends. I believed all this to be love. When trouble came, I bore it patiently, taking up my burdens with courage, and setting my face steadfastly toward the work of regaining for myself and my child that of which we had been cruelly robbed—home, position, and an honorable name. I thought I had won, that the goal had been attained, that I had so firmly established myself no taint of the past could touch me; and I believed I was happy in what I had achieved, until I suddenly awoke to the fact that all the fair fabric I had constructed and believed unassailable was only an outward show, built upon pride and self-righteousness; until I began to realize that I had all the time been possessed of a subconscious hate, the hate that wishes people dead and powerless to cross your path again! Does the picture appall you?"
Helen paused, almost breathless from inward emotion and rapid speaking.
"My dear, you have uncovered all this in connection with yourself?" gravely queried Mrs. Everleigh.
"Something has uncovered it," said Helen, with a bitter sigh.
"And what is the result of such searching introspection?"
"I feel like a whited sepulcher. I am appalled, shocked beyond measure at myself," said Helen, with a gesture of repugnance.
"Do you think it was your real self who was nursing all the evil you have portrayed?" gently inquired her companion.
Helen lifted a look of surprise to her.
"My real self?" she repeated, in perplexity.
"The real self is the purity—the innate consciousness that shrinks from evil, and would be clothed upon with the garment of righteousness, of right thinking and right living," said Mrs. Everleigh.