them better?«
    »O no, no. No, Louisa.«
    »Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my sense
of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces of things, to
exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them; I should have been a million
times wiser, happier, more loving, more contented, more innocent and human in
all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now, hear what I have come to
say.«
    He moved, to support her with his arm. She rising as he did so, they stood
close together: she, with a hand upon his shoulder, looking fixedly in his face.
    »With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a
moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules, and
figures, and definitions were not quite absolute; I have grown up, battling
every inch of my way.«
    »I never knew you were unhappy, my child.«
    »Father, I always knew it. In this strife I have almost repulsed and crushed
my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has left me doubting,
misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I have not learned; and my dismal
resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and that nothing in it
could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.«
    »And you so young, Louisa!« he said with pity.
    »And I so young. In this condition, father - for I show you now, without
fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as I know it - you
proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never made a pretence to him or you
that I loved him. I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew, that I never did.
I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant and useful to
Tom. I made that wild escape into something visionary, and have slowly found out
how wild it was. But Tom had been the subject of all the little tenderness of my
life; perhaps he became so because I knew so well how to pity him. It matters
little now, except as it may dispose you to think more leniently of his errors.«
    As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his other
shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face, went on.