Thomas Wingfold. Volume II by George MacDonald

Helen tottered to a little summer-house in the garden, which had / been her best retreat since she had given her room to her brother, / and there seated herself to regain breath and composure ere she went / to him. She had sought the door of Paradise, and the door of hell / had been opened to her! If the frightful idea which, she did not / doubt, had already suggested itself to Leopold, should now be / encouraged, there was nothing but black madness before her! Her / Poldie on the scaffold! God in heaven! Infinitely rather would she / poison herself and him! Then she remembered how pleased and consoled / he had been when she said something about their dying together, and / that reassured her a little: no, she was certain Leopold would never / yield himself to public shame! But she must take care that foolish, / extravagant curate should not come near him. There was no knowing to / what he might persuade him! Poor Poldie was so easily led by any / show of nobility -- anything that looked grand or self-sacrificing!

Helen's only knowledge of guilt came from the pale image of it / lifted above her horizon by the refraction of her sympathy. She did / not know, perhaps never would understand the ghastly horror of / conscious guilt, besides which there is no evil else. Agonies of / injury a man may endure, and, so far from being overwhelmed, rise / above them tenfold a man, who, were he to awake to the self-knowledge / of a crime, would sink into a heap of ruin. Then indeed, if there be / no God, or one that has not an infinite power of setting right that / which has gone wrong with his work, then indeed welcome the faith, / for faith it may then be called, of such as say there is no hereafter! / Helen did not know to what gulfs of personal shame, nay, to what / summits of public execration, a man may be glad to flee for refuge / from the fangs of home-born guilt -- if so be there is any refuge to / be found in either. And some kind of refuge there does seem to be. / Strange it is and true that in publicity itself lies some relief / from the gnawing of the worm -- as if even a cursing humanity were a / barrier of protection between the torn soul and its crime. It flees / to its kind for shelter from itself. Hence, I imagine, in part, may / the coolness of some criminals be accounted for. Their quietness is / the relief brought by confession -- even confession but to their / fellows. Is it that the crime seems then lifted a little from their / shoulders, and its weight shared by the ace?