things that make for moan!--but at least I understand why we are left to
do them: it is because we can. A dull fire was burning in her soul, and
over it stood the caldron of her history, and it bubbled in sighs and
moans.

Faber was ready enough to attribute every thing human to a physical
origin, but as he sat there pondering her condition, recalling her
emotion and strange speech of the night before, and watching the state
she was now in, an uneasiness began to gather--undefined, but other than
concerned her health. Something must be wrong somewhere. He kept
constantly assuring himself that at worst it could be but some mere
moleheap, of which her lovelily sensitive organization, under the
influence of a foolish preachment, made a mountain. Still, it was a huge
disorder to come from a trifle! At the same time who knew better than he
upon what a merest trifle nervous excitement will fix the attention! or
how to the mental eye such a speck will grow and grow until it absorb
the universe! Only a certain other disquieting thought, having come
once, would keep returning--that, thoroughly as he believed himself
acquainted with her mind, he had very little knowledge of her history.
He did not know a single friend of hers, had never met a person who knew
any thing of her family, or had even an acquaintance with her earlier
than his own. The thing he most dreaded was, that the shadow of some old
affection had returned upon her soul, and that, in her excessive
delicacy, she heaped blame upon herself that she had not absolutely
forgotten it. He flung from him in scorn every slightest suggestion of
blame. _His_ Juliet! his glorious Juliet! Bah!--But he must get her to
say what the matter was--for her own sake; he must help her to reveal
her trouble, whatever it might be--else how was he to do his best to
remove it! She should find he knew how to be generous!