prompt:
Chapter: "Would it were yesterday and I i' the grave,
     With her sweet faith above for monument"

Rosamond and Will stood motionless--they did not know how long--he
looking towards the spot where Dorothea had stood, and she looking
towards him with doubt.  It seemed an endless time to Rosamond, in
whose inmost soul there was hardly so much annoyance as gratification
from what had just happened.  Shallow natures dream of an easy sway
over the emotions of others, trusting implicitly in their own petty
magic to turn the deepest streams, and confident, by pretty gestures
and remarks, of making the thing that is not as though it were.  She
knew that Will had received a severe blow, but she had been little used
to imagining other people's states of mind except as a material cut
into shape by her own wishes; and she believed in her own power to
soothe or subdue.  Even Tertius, that most perverse of men, was always
subdued in the long-run: events had been obstinate, but still Rosamond
would have said now, as she did before her marriage, that she never
gave up what she had set her mind on.

She put out her arm and laid the tips of her fingers on Will's
coat-sleeve.

"Don't touch me!" he said, with an utterance like the cut of a lash,
darting from her, and changing from pink to white and back again, as if
his whole frame were tingling with the pain of the sting.  He wheeled
round to the other side of the room and stood opposite to her, with the
tips of his fingers in his pockets and his head thrown back, looking
fiercely not at Rosamond but at a point a few inches away from her.

She was keenly offended, but the Signs she made of this were such as
only Lydgate was used to interpret.  She became suddenly quiet and
seated herself, untying her hanging bonnet and laying it down with her
shawl.  Her little hands which she folded before her were very cold.

It would have been safer for Will in the first instance to have taken
up his hat and gone away; but he had felt no impulse to do this; on the
contrary, he had a horrible inclination to stay and shatter Rosamond
with his anger.  It seemed as impossible to bear the fatality she had
drawn down on him without venting his fury as it would be to a panther
to bear the javelin-wound without springing and biting.  And yet--how
could he tell a woman that he was ready to curse her?  He was fuming
under a repressive law which he was forced to acknowledge: he was
dangerously poised, and Rosamond's voice now brought the decisive
vibration.  In flute-like tones of sarcasm she said--

"You can easily go after Mrs. Casaubon and explain your preference."

"Go after her!" he burst out, with a sharp edge in his voice.  "Do you
think she would turn to look at me, or value any word I ever uttered to
her again at more than a dirty feather?--Explain!  How can a man
explain at the expense of a woman?"

"You can tell her what you please," said Rosamond with more tremor.

"Do you suppose she would like me better for sacrificing you?  She is
not a woman to be flattered because I made myself despicable--to
believe that I must be true to her because I was a dastard to you."

He began to move about with the restlessness of a wild animal that sees
prey but cannot reach it.  Presently he burst out again--

"I had no hope before--not much--of anything better to come.  But I had
one certainty--that she believed in me.  Whatever people had said or
done about me, she believed in me.--That's gone!  She'll never again
think me anything but a paltry pretence--too nice to take heaven
except upon flattering conditions, and yet selling myself for any
devil's change by the sly.  She'll think of me as an incarnate insult
to her, from the first moment we--"

Will stopped as if he had found himself grasping something that must
not be thrown and shattered.  He found another vent for his rage by
snatching up Rosamond's words again, as if they were reptiles to be
throttled and flung off.

"Explain!  Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell!  Explain my
preference!  I never had a _preference_ for her, any more than I have a
preference for breathing.  No other woman exists by the side of her.  I
would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any
other woman's living."

Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, was
almost losing the sense of her identity, and seemed to be waking into
some new terrible existence.  She had no sense of chill resolute
repulsion, of reticent self-justification such as she had known under
Lydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into
a bewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a
lash never experienced before.  What another nature felt in opposition
to her own was being burnt and bitten into her consciousness.  When
Will had ceased to speak she had become an image of sickened misery:
her lips were pale, and her eyes had a tearless dismay in them.  If it
had been Tertius who stood opposite to her, that look of misery would
have been a pang to him, and he would have sunk by her side to comfort
her, with that strong-armed comfort which, she had often held very
cheap.

Let it be forgiven to Will that he had no such movement of pity.  He
had felt no bond beforehand to this woman who had spoiled the ideal
treasure of his life, and he held himself blameless.  He knew that he
was cruel, but he had no relenting in him yet.

After he had done speaking, he still moved about, half in absence of
mind, and Rosamond sat perfectly still.  At length Will, seeming to
bethink himself, took up his hat, yet stood some moments irresolute.
He had spoken to her in a way that made a phrase of common politeness
difficult to utter; and yet, now that he had come to the point of going
away from her without further speech, he shrank from it as a brutality;
he felt checked and stultified in his anger.  He walked towards the
mantel-piece and leaned his arm on it, and waited in silence for--he
hardly knew what.  The vindictive fire was still burning in him, and he
could utter no word of retractation; but it was nevertheless in his
mind that having come back to this hearth where he had enjoyed a
caressing friendship he had found calamity seated there--he had had
suddenly revealed to him a trouble that lay outside the home as well as
within it.  And what seemed a foreboding was pressing upon him as with
slow pincers:--that his life might come to be enslaved by this helpless
woman who had thrown herself upon him in the dreary sadness of her
heart.  But he was in gloomy rebellion against the fact that his quick
apprehensiveness foreshadowed to him, and when his eyes fell on
Rosamond's blighted face it seemed to him that he was the more pitiable
of the two; for pain must enter into its glorified life of memory
before it can turn into compassion.

And so they remained for many minutes, opposite each other, far apart,
in silence; Will's face still possessed by a mute rage, and Rosamond's
by a mute misery.  The poor thing had no force to fling out any passion
in return; the terrible collapse of the illusion towards which all her
hope had been strained was a stroke which had too thoroughly shaken
her: her little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tottering in
the midst as a lonely bewildered consciousness.

Will wished that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadow
across his own cruel speech, which seemed to stand staring at them both
in mockery of any attempt at revived fellowship.  But she said nothing,
and at last with a desperate effort over himself, he asked, "Shall I
come in and see Lydgate this evening?"

"If you like," Rosamond answered, just audibly.

And then Will went out of the house, Martha never knowing that he had
been in.

After he was gone, Rosamond tried to get up from her seat, but fell
back fainting.  When she came to herself again, she felt too ill to
make the exertion of rising to ring the bell, and she remained helpless
until the girl, surprised at her long absence, thought for the first
time of looking for her in all the down-stairs rooms.  Rosamond said
that she had felt suddenly sick and faint, and wanted to be helped
up-stairs. When there she threw herself on the bed with her clothes on,
and lay in apparent torpor, as she had done once before on a memorable
day of grief.

Lydgate came home earlier than he had expected, about half-past five,
and found her there.  The perception that she was ill threw every other
thought into the background.  When he felt her pulse, her eyes rested
on him with more persistence than they had done for a long while, as if
she felt some content that he was there.  He perceived the difference
in a moment, and seating himself by her put his arm gently under her,
and bending over her said, "My poor Rosamond! has something agitated
you?"  Clinging to him she fell into hysterical sobbings and cries, and
for the next hour he did nothing but soothe and tend her.  He imagined
that Dorothea had been to see her, and that all this effect on her
nervous system, which evidently involved some new turning towards
himself, was due to the excitement of the new impressions which that
visit had raised.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Will and Rosamond are shocked at being found, and in a way that would look bad to Dorothea. Will realizes suddenly what Rosamond was trying to do; Rosamond wanted it to look like Will loved her, and kept him around in order to create this impression. He blows up at her, especially when she tries her methods that usually work on Lydgate. But her ways of quietly manipulating fail with Will; he gets very angry when she intimates that Will loves her, and says that the only woman he loves, or could think of loving, was Dorothea. Rosamond is very hurt, and her illusions and vanity are finally shattered. Will was a bit harsh toward her, but this was a lesson that she desperately needed, and hopefully it will do her good.


prompt:
Chapter: "Now, I saw in my dream, that just as they had ended their
    talk, they drew nigh to a very miry slough, that was in the
    midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall
    suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was
    Despond."--BUNYAN.

When Rosamond was quiet, and Lydgate had left her, hoping that she
might soon sleep under the effect of an anodyne, he went into the
drawing-room to fetch a book which he had left there, meaning to spend
the evening in his work-room, and he saw on the table Dorothea's letter
addressed to him.  He had not ventured to ask Rosamond if Mrs. Casaubon
had called, but the reading of this letter assured him of the fact, for
Dorothea mentioned that it was to be carried by herself.

When Will Ladislaw came in a little later Lydgate met him with a
surprise which made it clear that he had not been told of the earlier
visit, and Will could not say, "Did not Mrs. Lydgate tell you that I
came this morning?"

"Poor Rosamond is ill," Lydgate added immediately on his greeting.

"Not seriously, I hope," said Will.

"No--only a slight nervous shock--the effect of some agitation.  She
has been overwrought lately.  The truth is, Ladislaw, I am an unlucky
devil.  We have gone through several rounds of purgatory since you
left, and I have lately got on to a worse ledge of it than ever.  I
suppose you are only just come down--you look rather battered--you
have not been long enough in the town to hear anything?"

"I travelled all night and got to the White Hart at eight o'clock this
morning. I have been shutting myself up and resting," said Will,
feeling himself a sneak, but seeing no alternative to this evasion.

And then he heard Lydgate's account of the troubles which Rosamond had
already depicted to him in her way.  She had not mentioned the fact of
Will's name being connected with the public story--this detail not
immediately affecting her--and he now heard it for the first time.

"I thought it better to tell you that your name is mixed up with the
disclosures," said Lydgate, who could understand better than most men
how Ladislaw might be stung by the revelation.  "You will be sure to
hear it as soon as you turn out into the town.  I suppose it is true
that Raffles spoke to you."

"Yes," said Will, sardonically.  "I shall be fortunate if gossip does
not make me the most disreputable person in the whole affair.  I should
think the latest version must be, that I plotted with Raffles to murder
Bulstrode, and ran away from Middlemarch for the purpose."

He was thinking "Here is a new ring in the sound of my name to
recommend it in her hearing; however--what does it signify now?"

But he said nothing of Bulstrode's offer to him.  Will was very open
and careless about his personal affairs, but it was among the more
exquisite touches in nature's modelling of him that he had a delicate
generosity which warned him into reticence here.  He shrank from saying
that he had rejected Bulstrode's money, in the moment when he was
learning that it was Lydgate's misfortune to have accepted it.

Lydgate too was reticent in the midst of his confidence.  He made no
allusion to Rosamond's feeling under their trouble, and of Dorothea he
only said, "Mrs. Casaubon has been the one person to come forward and
say that she had no belief in any of the suspicions against me."
Observing a change in Will's face, he avoided any further mention of
her, feeling himself too ignorant of their relation to each other not
to fear that his words might have some hidden painful bearing on it.
And it occurred to him that Dorothea was the real cause of the present
visit to Middlemarch.

The two men were pitying each other, but it was only Will who guessed
the extent of his companion's trouble.  When Lydgate spoke with
desperate resignation of going to settle in London, and said with a
faint smile, "We shall have you again, old fellow." Will felt
inexpressibly mournful, and said nothing.  Rosamond had that morning
entreated him to urge this step on Lydgate; and it seemed to him as if
he were beholding in a magic panorama a future where he himself was
sliding into that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations of
circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single
momentous bargain.

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our
future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into
insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.  Poor Lydgate was inwardly
groaning on that margin, and Will was arriving at it.  It seemed to him
this evening as if the cruelty of his outburst to Rosamond had made an
obligation for him, and he dreaded the obligation: he dreaded Lydgate's
unsuspecting good-will: he dreaded his own distaste for his spoiled
life, which would leave him in motiveless levity.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Lydgate puts Rosamond to bed, still not totally aware of what has caused her distress. Will comes over, but Rosamond has not mentioned Will's visit earlier in the day; Will makes no mention of it to Lydgate either. Lydgate tells Will a bit of what has been going on, and that his name has also been mixed up in the proceedings. Will is not surprised, and almost does not care, because he thinks that Dorothea has already given up on him. When Lydgate mentions Dorothea's name, he notices that Will has a very peculiar reaction; he suspects that there is something between the two, and in this, he is correct.


prompt:
Chapter: "Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
        The Godhead's most benignant grace;
        Nor know we anything so fair
        As is the smile upon thy face;
        Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
        And fragrance in thy footing treads;
        Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
    And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
                                        --WORDSWORTH: Ode to Duty.

When Dorothea had seen Mr. Farebrother in the morning, she had promised
to go and dine at the parsonage on her return from Freshitt.  There was
a frequent interchange of visits between her and the Farebrother
family, which enabled her to say that she was not at all lonely at the
Manor, and to resist for the present the severe prescription of a lady
companion.  When she reached home and remembered her engagement, she
was glad of it; and finding that she had still an hour before she could
dress for dinner, she walked straight to the schoolhouse and entered
into a conversation with the master and mistress about the new bell,
giving eager attention to their small details and repetitions, and
getting up a dramatic sense that her life was very busy.  She paused on
her way back to talk to old Master Bunney who was putting in some
garden-seeds, and discoursed wisely with that rural sage about the
crops that would make the most return on a perch of ground, and the
result of sixty years' experience as to soils--namely, that if your
soil was pretty mellow it would do, but if there came wet, wet, wet to
make it all of a mummy, why then--

Finding that the social spirit had beguiled her into being rather late,
she dressed hastily and went over to the parsonage rather earlier than
was necessary.  That house was never dull, Mr. Farebrother, like
another White of Selborne, having continually something new to tell of
his inarticulate guests and proteges, whom he was teaching the boys not
to torment; and he had just set up a pair of beautiful goats to be pets
of the village in general, and to walk at large as sacred animals.  The
evening went by cheerfully till after tea, Dorothea talking more than
usual and dilating with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories of
creatures that converse compendiously with their antennae, and for
aught we know may hold reformed parliaments; when suddenly some
inarticulate little sounds were heard which called everybody's
attention.

"Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her small sister
moving about the furniture-legs distressfully, "what is the matter?"

"I have lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I fear the kitten has
rolled it away," said the tiny old lady, involuntarily continuing her
beaver-like notes.

"Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother, putting up his
glasses and looking at the carpet.

"Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble.  "A German box--very
pretty, but if it falls it always spins away as far as it can."

"Oh, if it is Ladislaw's present," said Mr. Farebrother, in a deep tone
of comprehension, getting up and hunting.  The box was found at last
under a chiffonier, and Miss Noble grasped it with delight, saying, "it
was under a fender the last time."

"That is an affair of the heart with my aunt," said Mr. Farebrother,
smiling at Dorothea, as he reseated himself.

"If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any one, Mrs. Casaubon,"
said his mother, emphatically,--"she is like a dog--she would take
their shoes for a pillow and sleep the better."

"Mr. Ladislaw's shoes, I would," said Henrietta Noble.

Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return.  She was surprised and
annoyed to find that her heart was palpitating violently, and that it
was quite useless to try after a recovery of her former animation.
Alarmed at herself--fearing some further betrayal of a change so marked
in its occasion, she rose and said in a low voice with undisguised
anxiety, "I must go; I have overtired myself."

Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It is true; you
must have half-exhausted yourself in talking about Lydgate.  That sort
of work tells upon one after the excitement is over."

He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did not attempt to
speak, even when he said good-night.

The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk back helpless
within the clutch of inescapable anguish.  Dismissing Tantripp with a
few faint words, she locked her door, and turning away from it towards
the vacant room she pressed her hands hard on the top of her head, and
moaned out--

"Oh, I did love him!"

Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook her too
thoroughly to leave any power of thought.  She could only cry in loud
whispers, between her sobs, after her lost belief which she had planted
and kept alive from a very little seed since the days in Rome--after
her lost joy of clinging with silent love and faith to one who,
misprized by others, was worthy in her thought--after her lost woman's
pride of reigning in his memory--after her sweet dim perspective of
hope, that along some pathway they should meet with unchanged
recognition and take up the backward years as a yesterday.

In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude have
looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man--she besought
hardness and coldness and aching weariness to bring her relief from the
mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish: she lay on the bare floor
and let the night grow cold around her; while her grand woman's frame
was shaken by sobs as if she had been a despairing child.

There were two images--two living forms that tore her heart in two, as
if it had been the heart of a mother who seems to see her child divided
by the sword, and presses one bleeding half to her breast while her
gaze goes forth in agony towards the half which is carried away by the
lying woman that has never known the mother's pang.

Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here within the
vibrating bond of mutual speech, was the bright creature whom she had
trusted--who had come to her like the spirit of morning visiting the
dim vault where she sat as the bride of a worn-out life; and now, with
a full consciousness which had never awakened before, she stretched out
her arms towards him and cried with bitter cries that their nearness
was a parting vision: she discovered her passion to herself in the
unshrinking utterance of despair.

And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving wherever she moved,
was the Will Ladislaw who was a changed belief exhausted of hope, a
detected illusion--no, a living man towards whom there could not yet
struggle any wail of regretful pity, from the midst of scorn and
indignation and jealous offended pride.  The fire of Dorothea's anger
was not easily spent, and it flamed out in fitful returns of spurning
reproach.  Why had he come obtruding his life into hers, hers that
might have been whole enough without him?  Why had he brought his cheap
regard and his lip-born words to her who had nothing paltry to give in
exchange?  He knew that he was deluding her--wished, in the very moment
of farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the whole price of
her heart, and knew that he had spent it half before.  Why had he not
stayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing--but only prayed that
they might be less contemptible?

But she lost energy at last even for her loud-whispered cries and
moans: she subsided into helpless sobs, and on the cold floor she
sobbed herself to sleep.

In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around
her, she awoke--not with any amazed wondering where she was or what had
happened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking into
the eyes of sorrow.  She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, and
seated herself in a great chair where she had often watched before.
She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feeling
ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked to a new
condition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible
conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit
down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her
thoughts.  For now the thoughts came thickly.  It was not in Dorothea's
nature, for longer than the duration of a paroxysm, to sit in the
narrow cell of her calamity, in the besotted misery of a consciousness
that only sees another's lot as an accident of its own.

She began now to live through that yesterday morning deliberately
again, forcing herself to dwell on every detail and its possible
meaning.  Was she alone in that scene?  Was it her event only?  She
forced herself to think of it as bound up with another woman's life--a
woman towards whom she had set out with a longing to carry some
clearness and comfort into her beclouded youth.  In her first outleap
of jealous indignation and disgust, when quitting the hateful room, she
had flung away all the mercy with which she had undertaken that visit.
She had enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and it
seemed to her as if Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever.  But
that base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival than to a
faithless lover, could have no strength of recurrence in Dorothea when
the dominant spirit of justice within her had once overcome the tumult
and had once shown her the truer measure of things.  All the active
thought with which she had before been representing to herself the
trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage union which, like her
own, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles--all this
vivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power: it
asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not let
us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance.  She said to her own
irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful, instead of
driving her back from effort.

And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose contact
with hers laid an obligation on her as if they had been suppliants
bearing the sacred branch?  The objects of her rescue were not to be
sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her.  She yearned towards
the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her
errant will.  "What should I do--how should I act now, this very day,
if I could clutch my own pain, and compel it to silence, and think of
those three?"

It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was light
piercing into the room.  She opened her curtains, and looked out
towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outside
the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his
back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures
moving--perhaps the shepherd with his dog.  Far off in the bending sky
was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the
manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance.  She was a part of that
involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from
her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish
complaining.

What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but
something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching
murmur which would soon gather distinctness.  She took off the clothes
which seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard watching in them,
and began to make her toilet.  Presently she rang for Tantripp, who
came in her dressing-gown.

"Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night," burst out
Tantripp, looking first at the bed and then at Dorothea's face, which
in spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a mater
dolorosa. "You'll kill yourself, you _will_.  Anybody might think now
you had a right to give yourself a little comfort."

"Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling.  "I have slept; I
am not ill.  I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.
And I want you to bring me my new dress; and most likely I shall want
my new bonnet to-day."

"They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam, and most
thankful I shall be to see you with a couple o' pounds' worth less of
crape," said Tantripp, stooping to light the fire.  "There's a reason
in mourning, as I've always said; and three folds at the bottom of your
skirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet--and if ever anybody looked
like an angel, it's you in a net quilling--is what's consistent for a
second year.  At least, that's _my_ thinking," ended Tantripp, looking
anxiously at the fire; "and if anybody was to marry me flattering
himself I should wear those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be
deceived by his own vanity, that's all."

"The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she used to
do in the old Lausanne days, only with a very low voice; "get me the
coffee."

She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against it
in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering at this
strange contrariness in her young mistress--that just the morning when
she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should have asked for her
lighter mourning which she had waived before.  Tantripp would never
have found the clew to this mystery.  Dorothea wished to acknowledge
that she had not the less an active life before her because she had
buried a private joy; and the tradition that fresh garments belonged to
all initiation, haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that
slight outward help towards calm resolve.  For the resolve was not easy.

Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch,
having made up her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeably
as possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Dorothea goes over to the Farebrothers' house, which she does very often; her visits keep her from being lonely, and also keep her from criticisms that she needs a companion. But, when Will comes up, she suddenly feels that she must leave; that evening, she finally realizes that she loved Will, although she fears that this love has been lost. By the morning, she has put aside all the remorse and anger of the previous evening; she also begins to wear new clothes, symbolic of lesser mourning, since it has been a year since Casaubon died. She resolves to go and see Rosamond again, and to offer help as she meant to do the day before.


prompt:
Chapter: "Du Erde warst auch diese Nacht bestandig,
     Und athmest neu erquickt zu meinen Fussen,
     Beginnest schon mit Lust mich zu umgeben,
     Zum regst und ruhrst ein kraftiges Reschliessen
     Zum hochsten Dasein immerfort zu streben.
                                   --Faust: 2r Theil.

When Dorothea was again at Lydgate's door speaking to Martha, he was in
the room close by with the door ajar, preparing to go out.  He heard
her voice, and immediately came to her.

"Do you think that Mrs. Lydgate can receive me this morning?" she said,
having reflected that it would be better to leave out all allusion to
her previous visit.

"I have no doubt she will," said Lydgate, suppressing his thought about
Dorothea's looks, which were as much changed as Rosamond's, "if you
will be kind enough to come in and let me tell her that you are here.
She has not been very well since you were here yesterday, but she is
better this morning, and I think it is very likely that she will be
cheered by seeing you again."

It was plain that Lydgate, as Dorothea had expected, knew nothing about
the circumstances of her yesterday's visit; nay, he appeared to imagine
that she had carried it out according to her intention.  She had
prepared a little note asking Rosamond to see her, which she would have
given to the servant if he had not been in the way, but now she was in
much anxiety as to the result of his announcement.

After leading her into the drawing-room, he paused to take a letter
from his pocket and put it into her hands, saying, "I wrote this last
night, and was going to carry it to Lowick in my ride.  When one is
grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less
unsatisfactory than speech--one does not at least _hear_ how inadequate
the words are."

Dorothea's face brightened.  "It is I who have most to thank for, since
you have let me take that place.  You _have_ consented?" she said,
suddenly doubting.

"Yes, the check is going to Bulstrode to-day."

He said no more, but went up-stairs to Rosamond, who had but lately
finished dressing herself, and sat languidly wondering what she should
do next, her habitual industry in small things, even in the days of her
sadness, prompting her to begin some kind of occupation, which she
dragged through slowly or paused in from lack of interest.  She looked
ill, but had recovered her usual quietude of manner, and Lydgate had
feared to disturb her by any questions.  He had told her of Dorothea's
letter containing the check, and afterwards he had said, "Ladislaw is
come, Rosy; he sat with me last night; I dare say he will be here again
to-day. I thought he looked rather battered and depressed."  And
Rosamond had made no reply.

Now, when he came up, he said to her very gently, "Rosy, dear, Mrs.
Casaubon is come to see you again; you would like to see her, would you
not?"  That she colored and gave rather a startled movement did not
surprise him after the agitation produced by the interview yesterday--a
beneficent agitation, he thought, since it seemed to have made her turn
to him again.

Rosamond dared not say no.  She dared not with a tone of her voice
touch the facts of yesterday.  Why had Mrs. Casaubon come again?  The
answer was a blank which Rosamond could only fill up with dread, for
Will Ladislaw's lacerating words had made every thought of Dorothea a
fresh smart to her.  Nevertheless, in her new humiliating uncertainty
she dared do nothing but comply.  She did not say yes, but she rose and
let Lydgate put a light shawl over her shoulders, while he said, "I am
going out immediately." Then something crossed her mind which prompted
her to say, "Pray tell Martha not to bring any one else into the
drawing-room." And Lydgate assented, thinking that he fully understood
this wish.  He led her down to the drawing-room door, and then turned
away, observing to himself that he was rather a blundering husband to
be dependent for his wife's trust in him on the influence of another
woman.

Rosamond, wrapping her soft shawl around her as she walked towards
Dorothea, was inwardly wrapping her soul in cold reserve.  Had Mrs.
Casaubon come to say anything to her about Will?  If so, it was a
liberty that Rosamond resented; and she prepared herself to meet every
word with polite impassibility.  Will had bruised her pride too sorely
for her to feel any compunction towards him and Dorothea: her own
injury seemed much the greater.  Dorothea was not only the "preferred"
woman, but had also a formidable advantage in being Lydgate's
benefactor; and to poor Rosamond's pained confused vision it seemed
that this Mrs. Casaubon--this woman who predominated in all things
concerning her--must have come now with the sense of having the
advantage, and with animosity prompting her to use it.  Indeed, not
Rosamond only, but any one else, knowing the outer facts of the case,
and not the simple inspiration on which Dorothea acted, might well have
wondered why she came.

Looking like the lovely ghost of herself, her graceful slimness wrapped
in her soft white shawl, the rounded infantine mouth and cheek
inevitably suggesting mildness and innocence, Rosamond paused at three
yards' distance from her visitor and bowed.  But Dorothea, who had
taken off her gloves, from an impulse which she could never resist when
she wanted a sense of freedom, came forward, and with her face full of
a sad yet sweet openness, put out her hand.  Rosamond could not avoid
meeting her glance, could not avoid putting her small hand into
Dorothea's, which clasped it with gentle motherliness; and immediately
a doubt of her own prepossessions began to stir within her.  Rosamond's
eye was quick for faces; she saw that Mrs. Casaubon's face looked pale
and changed since yesterday, yet gentle, and like the firm softness of
her hand.  But Dorothea had counted a little too much on her own
strength: the clearness and intensity of her mental action this morning
were the continuance of a nervous exaltation which made her frame as
dangerously responsive as a bit of finest Venetian crystal; and in
looking at Rosamond, she suddenly found her heart swelling, and was
unable to speak--all her effort was required to keep back tears.  She
succeeded in that, and the emotion only passed over her face like the
spirit of a sob; but it added to Rosamond's impression that Mrs.
Casaubon's state of mind must be something quite different from what
she had imagined.

So they sat down without a word of preface on the two chairs that
happened to be nearest, and happened also to be close together; though
Rosamond's notion when she first bowed was that she should stay a long
way off from Mrs. Casaubon.  But she ceased thinking how anything would
turn out--merely wondering what would come.  And Dorothea began to
speak quite simply, gathering firmness as she went on.

"I had an errand yesterday which I did not finish; that is why I am
here again so soon.  You will not think me too troublesome when I tell
you that I came to talk to you about the injustice that has been shown
towards Mr. Lydgate.  It will cheer you--will it not?--to know a great
deal about him, that he may not like to speak about himself just
because it is in his own vindication and to his own honor.  You will
like to know that your husband has warm friends, who have not left off
believing in his high character?  You will let me speak of this without
thinking that I take a liberty?"

The cordial, pleading tones which seemed to flow with generous
heedlessness above all the facts which had filled Rosamond's mind as
grounds of obstruction and hatred between her and this woman, came as
soothingly as a warm stream over her shrinking fears.  Of course Mrs.
Casaubon had the facts in her mind, but she was not going to speak of
anything connected with them.  That relief was too great for Rosamond
to feel much else at the moment.  She answered prettily, in the new
ease of her soul--

"I know you have been very good.  I shall like to hear anything you
will say to me about Tertius."

"The day before yesterday," said Dorothea, "when I had asked him to
come to Lowick to give me his opinion on the affairs of the Hospital,
he told me everything about his conduct and feelings in this sad event
which has made ignorant people cast suspicions on him.  The reason he
told me was because I was very bold and asked him.  I believed that he
had never acted dishonorably, and I begged him to tell me the history.
He confessed to me that he had never told it before, not even to you,
because he had a great dislike to say, 'I was not wrong,' as if that
were proof, when there are guilty people who will say so.  The truth
is, he knew nothing of this man Raffles, or that there were any bad
secrets about him; and he thought that Mr. Bulstrode offered him the
money because he repented, out of kindness, of having refused it
before.  All his anxiety about his patient was to treat him rightly,
and he was a little uncomfortable that the case did not end as he had
expected; but he thought then and still thinks that there may have been
no wrong in it on any one's part.  And I have told Mr. Farebrother, and
Mr. Brooke, and Sir James Chettam: they all believe in your husband.
That will cheer you, will it not?  That will give you courage?"

Dorothea's face had become animated, and as it beamed on Rosamond very
close to her, she felt something like bashful timidity before a
superior, in the presence of this self-forgetful ardor.  She said, with
blushing embarrassment, "Thank you: you are very kind."

"And he felt that he had been so wrong not to pour out everything about
this to you.  But you will forgive him.  It was because he feels so
much more about your happiness than anything else--he feels his life
bound into one with yours, and it hurts him more than anything, that
his misfortunes must hurt you.  He could speak to me because I am an
indifferent person.  And then I asked him if I might come to see you;
because I felt so much for his trouble and yours.  That is why I came
yesterday, and why I am come to-day. Trouble is so hard to bear, is it
not?--  How can we live and think that any one has trouble--piercing
trouble--and we could help them, and never try?"

Dorothea, completely swayed by the feeling that she was uttering,
forgot everything but that she was speaking from out the heart of her
own trial to Rosamond's. The emotion had wrought itself more and more
into her utterance, till the tones might have gone to one's very
marrow, like a low cry from some suffering creature in the darkness.
And she had unconsciously laid her hand again on the little hand that
she had pressed before.

Rosamond, with an overmastering pang, as if a wound within her had been
probed, burst into hysterical crying as she had done the day before
when she clung to her husband.  Poor Dorothea was feeling a great wave
of her own sorrow returning over her--her thought being drawn to the
possible share that Will Ladislaw might have in Rosamond's mental
tumult.  She was beginning to fear that she should not be able to
suppress herself enough to the end of this meeting, and while her hand
was still resting on Rosamond's lap, though the hand underneath it was
withdrawn, she was struggling against her own rising sobs.  She tried
to master herself with the thought that this might be a turning-point
in three lives--not in her own; no, there the irrevocable had
happened, but--in those three lives which were touching hers with the
solemn neighborhood of danger and distress.  The fragile creature who
was crying close to her--there might still be time to rescue her from
the misery of false incompatible bonds; and this moment was unlike any
other: she and Rosamond could never be together again with the same
thrilling consciousness of yesterday within them both.  She felt the
relation between them to be peculiar enough to give her a peculiar
influence, though she had no conception that the way in which her own
feelings were involved was fully known to Mrs. Lydgate.

It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea could
imagine: she was under the first great shock that had shattered her
dream-world in which she had been easily confident of herself and
critical of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation of
feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a shrinking aversion
and dread, as one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred towards
her, made her soul totter all the more with a sense that she had been
walking in an unknown world which had just broken in upon her.

When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and she
withdrew the handkerchief with which she had been hiding her face, her
eyes met Dorothea's as helplessly as if they had been blue flowers.
What was the use of thinking about behavior after this crying?  And
Dorothea looked almost as childish, with the neglected trace of a
silent tear.  Pride was broken down between these two.

"We were talking about your husband," Dorothea said, with some
timidity.  "I thought his looks were sadly changed with suffering the
other day.  I had not seen him for many weeks before.  He said he had
been feeling very lonely in his trial; but I think he would have borne
it all better if he had been able to be quite open with you."

"Tertius is so angry and impatient if I say anything," said Rosamond,
imagining that he had been complaining of her to Dorothea.  "He ought
not to wonder that I object to speak to him on painful subjects."

"It was himself he blamed for not speaking," said Dorothea.  "What he
said of you was, that he could not be happy in doing anything which
made you unhappy--that his marriage was of course a bond which must
affect his choice about everything; and for that reason he refused my
proposal that he should keep his position at the Hospital, because that
would bind him to stay in Middlemarch, and he would not undertake to do
anything which would be painful to you.  He could say that to me,
because he knows that I had much trial in my marriage, from my
husband's illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him; and he
knows that I have felt how hard it is to walk always in fear of hurting
another who is tied to us."

Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing
over Rosamond's face.  But there was no answer, and she went on, with a
gathering tremor, "Marriage is so unlike everything else.  There is
something even awful in the nearness it brings.  Even if we loved some
one else better than--than those we were married to, it would be no
use"--poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her
language brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving
or getting any blessedness in that sort of love.  I know it may be very
dear--but it murders our marriage--and then the marriage stays with us
like a murder--and everything else is gone.  And then our husband--if
he loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse
in his life--"

Her voice had sunk very low: there was a dread upon her of presuming
too far, and of speaking as if she herself were perfection addressing
error.  She was too much preoccupied with her own anxiety, to be aware
that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled with the need to express
pitying fellowship rather than rebuke, she put her hands on Rosamond's,
and said with more agitated rapidity,--"I know, I know that the feeling
may be very dear--it has taken hold of us unawares--it is so hard, it
may seem like death to part with it--and we are weak--I am weak--"

The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which she was struggling to
save another, rushed over Dorothea with conquering force.  She stopped
in speechless agitation, not crying, but feeling as if she were being
inwardly grappled.  Her face had become of a deathlier paleness, her
lips trembled, and she pressed her hands helplessly on the hands that
lay under them.

Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own--hurried
along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful,
undefined aspect--could find no words, but involuntarily she put her
lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her, and then for a
minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a
shipwreck.

"You are thinking what is not true," said Rosamond, in an eager
half-whisper, while she was still feeling Dorothea's arms round
her--urged by a mysterious necessity to free herself from something
that oppressed her as if it were blood guiltiness.

They moved apart, looking at each other.

"When you came in yesterday--it was not as you thought," said Rosamond
in the same tone.

There was a movement of surprised attention in Dorothea.  She expected
a vindication of Rosamond herself.

"He was telling me how he loved another woman, that I might know he
could never love me," said Rosamond, getting more and more hurried as
she went on.  "And now I think he hates me because--because you
mistook him yesterday.  He says it is through me that you will think
ill of him--think that he is a false person.  But it shall not be
through me.  He has never had any love for me--I know he has not--he
has always thought slightly of me.  He said yesterday that no other
woman existed for him beside you.  The blame of what happened is
entirely mine.  He said he could never explain to you--because of me.
He said you could never think well of him again.  But now I have told
you, and he cannot reproach me any more."

Rosamond had delivered her soul under impulses which she had not known
before.  She had begun her confession under the subduing influence of
Dorothea's emotion; and as she went on she had gathered the sense that
she was repelling Will's reproaches, which were still like a
knife-wound within her.

The revulsion of feeling in Dorothea was too strong to be called joy.
It was a tumult in which the terrible strain of the night and morning
made a resistant pain:--she could only perceive that this would be joy
when she had recovered her power of feeling it.  Her immediate
consciousness was one of immense sympathy without check; she cared for
Rosamond without struggle now, and responded earnestly to her last
words--

"No, he cannot reproach you any more."

With her usual tendency to over-estimate the good in others, she felt a
great outgoing of her heart towards Rosamond, for the generous effort
which had redeemed her from suffering, not counting that the effort was
a reflex of her own energy.  After they had been silent a little, she
said--

"You are not sorry that I came this morning?"

"No, you have been very good to me," said Rosamond.  "I did not think
that you would be so good.  I was very unhappy.  I am not happy now.
Everything is so sad."

"But better days will come.  Your husband will be rightly valued.  And
he depends on you for comfort.  He loves you best.  The worst loss
would be to lose that--and you have not lost it," said Dorothea.

She tried to thrust away the too overpowering thought of her own
relief, lest she should fail to win some sign that Rosamond's affection
was yearning back towards her husband.

"Tertius did not find fault with me, then?" said Rosamond,
understanding now that Lydgate might have said anything to Mrs.
Casaubon, and that she certainly was different from other women.
Perhaps there was a faint taste of jealousy in the question.  A smile
began to play over Dorothea's face as she said--

"No, indeed!  How could you imagine it?"  But here the door opened, and
Lydgate entered.

"I am come back in my quality of doctor," he said.  "After I went away,
I was haunted by two pale faces: Mrs. Casaubon looked as much in need
of care as you, Rosy.  And I thought that I had not done my duty in
leaving you together; so when I had been to Coleman's I came home
again.  I noticed that you were walking, Mrs. Casaubon, and the sky has
changed--I think we may have rain.  May I send some one to order your
carriage to come for you?"

"Oh, no!  I am strong: I need the walk," said Dorothea, rising with
animation in her face.  "Mrs. Lydgate and I have chatted a great deal,
and it is time for me to go.  I have always been accused of being
immoderate and saying too much."

She put out her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quiet
good-by without kiss or other show of effusion: there had been between
them too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of it
superficially.

As Lydgate took her to the door she said nothing of Rosamond, but told
him of Mr. Farebrother and the other friends who had listened with
belief to his story.

When he came back to Rosamond, she had already thrown herself on the
sofa, in resigned fatigue.

"Well, Rosy," he said, standing over her, and touching her hair, "what
do you think of Mrs. Casaubon now you have seen so much of her?"

"I think she must be better than any one," said Rosamond, "and she is
very beautiful.  If you go to talk to her so often, you will be more
discontented with me than ever!"

Lydgate laughed at the "so often."  "But has she made you any less
discontented with me?"

"I think she has," said Rosamond, looking up in his face.  "How heavy
your eyes are, Tertius--and do push your hair back." He lifted up his
large white hand to obey her, and felt thankful for this little mark of
interest in him.  Poor Rosamond's vagrant fancy had come back terribly
scourged--meek enough to nestle under the old despised shelter.  And
the shelter was still there: Lydgate had accepted his narrowed lot with
sad resignation.  He had chosen this fragile creature, and had taken
the burthen of her life upon his arms.  He must walk as he could,
carrying that burthen pitifully.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Dorothea finds Lydgate at home, and Lydgate thanks her for giving him the money with which to pay his debt to Bulstrode. Dorothea is only too happy to have been of service; she asks him in Rosamond is in, and finds Lydgate completely unaware of what went on the previous day. Rosamond is wary at the visit, but receives her anyway, and finds her quite different from the day before, though perhaps troubled. Dorothea reassures her that her husband is a good person, and is still welcomed in Middlemarch by people of character and influence, like herself, Sir James, Mr. Brooke, and Mr. Farebrother. Dorothea then proceeds to speak about marriage, trying to address Rosamond and Lydgate's marriage in the process. Dorothea hits on some of her own sadness though, and her anguish at the whole debacle with Will becomes apparent. Dorothea convinces Rosamond that Lydgate loves her very much, and that she needs to give the marriage a chance, because she still has his love; this cheers Rosamond up a bit, though her mind is still dazed from the previous day. Rosamond feels that she should clarify the situation with Will, so Rosamond tells her that Will was only there to explain that he loved someone other than Rosamond, and always would. Rosamond tells her this to try and exonerate herself somewhat, although Dorothea takes this statement as an expression of sympathy and goodness on Rosamond's part. Then, Lydgate enters, and the two part; neither can hold anything against the other anymore, and both their minds have been eased.


prompt:
Chapter: "My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
                                  --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.

Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are unlikely to stay in
banishment unless they are obliged.  When Will Ladislaw exiled himself
from Middlemarch he had placed no stronger obstacle to his return than
his own resolve, which was by no means an iron barrier, but simply a
state of mind liable to melt into a minuet with other states of mind,
and to find itself bowing, smiling, and giving place with polite
facility.  As the months went on, it had seemed more and more difficult
to him to say why he should not run down to Middlemarch--merely for the
sake of hearing something about Dorothea; and if on such a flying visit
he should chance by some strange coincidence to meet with her, there
was no reason for him to be ashamed of having taken an innocent journey
which he had beforehand supposed that he should not take.  Since he was
hopelessly divided from her, he might surely venture into her
neighborhood; and as to the suspicious friends who kept a dragon watch
over her--their opinions seemed less and less important with time and
change of air.

And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea, which
seemed to make a journey to Middlemarch a sort of philanthropic duty.
Will had given a disinterested attention to an intended settlement on a
new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds in order to carry out
a good design had set him on debating with himself whether it would not
be a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode, to urge the
application of that money which had been offered to himself as a means
of carrying out a scheme likely to be largely beneficial.  The question
seemed a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance to again entering
into any relation with the banker might have made him dismiss it
quickly, if there had not arisen in his imagination the probability
that his judgment might be more safely determined by a visit to
Middlemarch.

That was the object which Will stated to himself as a reason for coming
down.  He had meant to confide in Lydgate, and discuss the money
question with him, and he had meant to amuse himself for the few
evenings of his stay by having a great deal of music and badinage with
fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends at Lowick Parsonage:--if
the Parsonage was close to the Manor, that was no fault of his.  He had
neglected the Farebrothers before his departure, from a proud
resistance to the possible accusation of indirectly seeking interviews
with Dorothea; but hunger tames us, and Will had become very hungry for
the vision of a certain form and the sound of a certain voice.
Nothing, had done instead--not the opera, or the converse of zealous
politicians, or the flattering reception (in dim corners) of his new
hand in leading articles.

Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almost everything
would be in his familiar little world; fearing, indeed, that there
would be no surprises in his visit.  But he had found that humdrum
world in a terribly dynamic condition, in which even badinage and
lyrism had turned explosive; and the first day of this visit had become
the most fatal epoch of his life.  The next morning he felt so harassed
with the nightmare of consequences--he dreaded so much the immediate
issues before him--that seeing while he breakfasted the arrival of the
Riverston coach, he went out hurriedly and took his place on it, that
he might be relieved, at least for a day, from the necessity of doing
or saying anything in Middlemarch.  Will Ladislaw was in one of those
tangled crises which are commoner in experience than one might imagine,
from the shallow absoluteness of men's judgments.  He had found
Lydgate, for whom he had the sincerest respect, under circumstances
which claimed his thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the
reason why, in spite of that claim, it would have been better for Will
to have avoided all further intimacy, or even contact, with Lydgate,
was precisely of the kind to make such a course appear impossible.  To
a creature of Will's susceptible temperament--without any neutral
region of indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything that
befell him into the collisions of a passionate drama--the revelation
that Rosamond had made her happiness in any way dependent on him was a
difficulty which his outburst of rage towards her had immeasurably
increased for him.  He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to
show the fulness of his relenting: he must go to her again; the
friendship could not be put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness was a
power which he dreaded.  And all the while there was no more foretaste
of enjoyment in the life before him than if his limbs had been lopped
off and he was making his fresh start on crutches.  In the night he had
debated whether he should not get on the coach, not for Riverston, but
for London, leaving a note to Lydgate which would give a makeshift
reason for his retreat.  But there were strong cords pulling him back
from that abrupt departure: the blight on his happiness in thinking of
Dorothea, the crushing of that chief hope which had remained in spite
of the acknowledged necessity for renunciation, was too fresh a misery
for him to resign himself to it and go straightway into a distance
which was also despair.

Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach.  He
came back again by it while it was still daylight, having made up his
mind that he must go to Lydgate's that evening.  The Rubicon, we know,
was a very insignificant stream to look at; its significance lay
entirely in certain invisible conditions.  Will felt as if he were
forced to cross his small boundary ditch, and what he saw beyond it was
not empire, but discontented subjection.

But it is given to us sometimes even in our every-day life to witness
the saving influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy of rescue
that may lie in a self-subduing act of fellowship.  If Dorothea, after
her night's anguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamond--why, she
perhaps would have been a woman who gained a higher character for
discretion, but it would certainly not have been as well for those
three who were on one hearth in Lydgate's house at half-past seven that
evening.

Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she received him with
a languid coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervous
exhaustion, of which he could not suppose that it had any relation to
Will.  And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, he
innocently apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean
backward and rest.  Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the
part of a friend who was making his first appearance and greeting to
Rosamond, while his thoughts were busy about her feeling since that
scene of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both,
like the painful vision of a double madness.  It happened that nothing
called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond poured out the tea,
and Will came near to fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded paper
in his saucer.  He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he went back
to his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper.  What Rosamond had
written to him would probably deepen the painful impressions of the
evening.  Still, he opened and read it by his bed-candle. There were
only these few words in her neatly flowing hand:--

"I have told Mrs. Casaubon.  She is not under any mistake about you.  I
told her because she came to see me and was very kind.  You will have
nothing to reproach me with now.  I shall not have made any difference
to you."

The effect of these words was not quite all gladness.  As Will dwelt on
them with excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning at
the thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond--at the
uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity wounded in
having an explanation of his conduct offered to her.  There might still
remain in her mind a changed association with him which made an
irremediable difference--a lasting flaw.  With active fancy he wrought
himself into a state of doubt little more easy than that of the man who
has escaped from wreck by night and stands on unknown ground in the
darkness.  Until that wretched yesterday--except the moment of
vexation long ago in the very same room and in the very same
presence--all their vision, all their thought of each other, had been
as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies,
where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.  But now--would
Dorothea meet him in that world again?

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Will debates with himself whether he should leave Middlemarch altogether after the events of the previous day; in the end, he decides he cannot leave after making some amends to Rosamond after her shock. He is sorry that he got so angry at her, but at the same time, does not want to come straight out and apologizeespecially since this would mean that he would have to explain what happened to Lydgate, which is undesirable. Will does end up going, and is as affable as he can be to Rosamond, without betraying what went on before. Rosamond gives Will a note, saying that Dorothea has been told the truth about what happened; Will is somewhat relieved, but is worried about what might have transpired between Rosamond and Dorothea.


prompt:
Chapter: "And now good-morrow to our waking souls
     Which watch not one another out of fear;
     For love all love of other sights controls,
     And makes one little room, an everywhere."
                                       --DR. DONNE.

On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to Rosamond, she had had
two nights of sound sleep, and had not only lost all traces of fatigue,
but felt as if she had a great deal of superfluous strength--that is
to say, more strength than she could manage to concentrate on any
occupation.  The day before, she had taken long walks outside the
grounds, and had paid two visits to the Parsonage; but she never in her
life told any one the reason why she spent her time in that fruitless
manner, and this morning she was rather angry with herself for her
childish restlessness.  To-day was to be spent quite differently.  What
was there to be done in the village?  Oh dear! nothing.  Everybody was
well and had flannel; nobody's pig had died; and it was Saturday
morning, when there was a general scrubbing of doors and door-stones,
and when it was useless to go into the school.  But there were various
subjects that Dorothea was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved
to throw herself energetically into the gravest of all.  She sat down
in the library before her particular little heap of books on political
economy and kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light
as to the best way of spending money so as not to injure one's
neighbors, or--what comes to the same thing--so as to do them the most
good.  Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of
it, would certainly keep her mind steady.  Unhappily her mind slipped
off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself reading
sentences twice over with an intense consciousness of many things, but
not of any one thing contained in the text.  This was hopeless.  Should
she order the carriage and drive to Tipton?  No; for some reason or
other she preferred staying at Lowick.  But her vagrant mind must be
reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline; and she walked
round and round the brown library considering by what sort of manoeuvre
she could arrest her wandering thoughts.  Perhaps a mere task was the
best means--something to which she must go doggedly.  Was there not the
geography of Asia Minor, in which her slackness had often been rebuked
by Mr. Casaubon?  She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one:
this morning she might make herself finally sure that Paphlagonia was
not on the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the
Chalybes firmly on the shores of the Euxine.  A map was a fine thing to
study when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up
of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them.
Dorothea set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, and uttering
the names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime.
She looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience--nodding
her head and marking the names off on her fingers, with a little
pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off to put her hands on
each side of her face and say, "Oh dear!  oh dear!"

There was no reason why this should end any more than a merry-go-round;
but it was at last interrupted by the opening of the door and the
announcement of Miss Noble.

The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached Dorothea's shoulder,
was warmly welcomed, but while her hand was being pressed she made many
of her beaver-like noises, as if she had something difficult to say.

"Do sit down," said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward.  "Am I wanted
for anything?  I shall be so glad if I can do anything."

"I will not stay," said Miss Noble, putting her hand into her small
basket, and holding some article inside it nervously; "I have left a
friend in the churchyard."  She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds,
and unconsciously drew forth the article which she was fingering.  It
was the tortoise-shell lozenge-box, and Dorothea felt the color
mounting to her cheeks.

"Mr. Ladislaw," continued the timid little woman.  "He fears he has
offended you, and has begged me to ask if you will see him for a few
minutes."

Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing her mind that
she could not receive him in this library, where her husband's
prohibition seemed to dwell.  She looked towards the window.  Could she
go out and meet him in the grounds?  The sky was heavy, and the trees
had begun to shiver as at a coming storm.  Besides, she shrank from
going out to him.

"Do see him, Mrs. Casaubon," said Miss Noble, pathetically; "else I
must go back and say No, and that will hurt him."

"Yes, I will see him," said Dorothea.  "Pray tell him to come."

What else was there to be done?  There was nothing that she longed for
at that moment except to see Will: the possibility of seeing him had
thrust itself insistently between her and every other object; and yet
she had a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her--a sense that
she was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.

When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood in
the middle of the library with her hands falling clasped before her,
making no attempt to compose herself in an attitude of dignified
unconsciousness.  What she was least conscious of just then was her own
body: she was thinking of what was likely to be in Will's mind, and of
the hard feelings that others had had about him.  How could any duty
bind her to hardness?  Resistance to unjust dispraise had mingled with
her feeling for him from the very first, and now in the rebound of her
heart after her anguish the resistance was stronger than ever.  "If I
love him too much it is because he has been used so ill:"--there was a
voice within her saying this to some imagined audience in the library,
when the door was opened, and she saw Will before her.

She did not move, and he came towards her with more doubt and timidity
in his face than she had ever seen before.  He was in a state of
uncertainty which made him afraid lest some look or word of his should
condemn him to a new distance from her; and Dorothea was afraid of her
_own_ emotion.  She looked as if there were a spell upon her, keeping
her motionless and hindering her from unclasping her hands, while some
intense, grave yearning was imprisoned within her eyes.  Seeing that
she did not put out her hand as usual, Will paused a yard from her and
said with embarrassment, "I am so grateful to you for seeing me."

"I wanted to see you," said Dorothea, having no other words at command.
It did not occur to her to sit down, and Will did not give a cheerful
interpretation to this queenly way of receiving him; but he went on to
say what he had made up his mind to say.

"I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for coming back so soon.
I have been punished for my impatience.  You know--every one knows
now--a painful story about my parentage.  I knew of it before I went
away, and I always meant to tell you of it if--if we ever met again."

There was a slight movement in Dorothea, and she unclasped her hands,
but immediately folded them over each other.

"But the affair is matter of gossip now," Will continued.  "I wished
you to know that something connected with it--something which happened
before I went away, helped to bring me down here again.  At least I
thought it excused my coming.  It was the idea of getting Bulstrode to
apply some money to a public purpose--some money which he had thought
of giving me.  Perhaps it is rather to Bulstrode's credit that he
privately offered me compensation for an old injury: he offered to give
me a good income to make amends; but I suppose you know the
disagreeable story?"

Will looked doubtfully at Dorothea, but his manner was gathering some
of the defiant courage with which he always thought of this fact in his
destiny.  He added, "You know that it must be altogether painful to me."

"Yes--yes--I know," said Dorothea, hastily.

"I did not choose to accept an income from such a source.  I was sure
that you would not think well of me if I did so," said Will.  Why
should he mind saying anything of that sort to her now?  She knew that
he had avowed his love for her.  "I felt that"--he broke off,
nevertheless.

"You acted as I should have expected you to act," said Dorothea, her
face brightening and her head becoming a little more erect on its
beautiful stem.

"I did not believe that you would let any circumstance of my birth
create a prejudice in you against me, though it was sure to do so in
others," said Will, shaking his head backward in his old way, and
looking with a grave appeal into her eyes.

"If it were a new hardship it would be a new reason for me to cling to
you," said Dorothea, fervidly.  "Nothing could have changed me but--"
her heart was swelling, and it was difficult to go on; she made a great
effort over herself to say in a low tremulous voice, "but thinking that
you were different--not so good as I had believed you to be."

"You are sure to believe me better than I am in everything but one,"
said Will, giving way to his own feeling in the evidence of hers.  "I
mean, in my truth to you.  When I thought you doubted of that, I didn't
care about anything that was left.  I thought it was all over with me,
and there was nothing to try for--only things to endure."

"I don't doubt you any longer," said Dorothea, putting out her hand; a
vague fear for him impelling her unutterable affection.

He took her hand and raised it to his lips with something like a sob.
But he stood with his hat and gloves in the other hand, and might have
done for the portrait of a Royalist.  Still it was difficult to loose
the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion that distressed
her, looked and moved away.

"See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed,"
she said, walking towards the window, yet speaking and moving with only
a dim sense of what she was doing.

Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned against the tall
back of a leather chair, on which he ventured now to lay his hat and
gloves, and free himself from the intolerable durance of formality to
which he had been for the first time condemned in Dorothea's presence.
It must be confessed that he felt very happy at that moment leaning on
the chair.  He was not much afraid of anything that she might feel now.

They stood silent, not looking at each other, but looking at the
evergreens which were being tossed, and were showing the pale underside
of their leaves against the blackening sky.  Will never enjoyed the
prospect of a storm so much: it delivered him from the necessity of
going away.  Leaves and little branches were hurled about, and the
thunder was getting nearer.  The light was more and more sombre, but
there came a flash of lightning which made them start and look at each
other, and then smile.  Dorothea began to say what she had been
thinking of.

"That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have had nothing
to try for.  If we had lost our own chief good, other people's good
would remain, and that is worth trying for.  Some can be happy.  I
seemed to see that more clearly than ever, when I was the most
wretched.  I can hardly think how I could have borne the trouble, if
that feeling had not come to me to make strength."

"You have never felt the sort of misery I felt," said Will; "the misery
of knowing that you must despise me."

"But I have felt worse--it was worse to think ill--" Dorothea had begun
impetuously, but broke off.

Will colored.  He had the sense that whatever she said was uttered in
the vision of a fatality that kept them apart.  He was silent a moment,
and then said passionately--

"We may at least have the comfort of speaking to each other without
disguise.  Since I must go away--since we must always be divided--you
may think of me as one on the brink of the grave."

While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit
each of them up for the other--and the light seemed to be the terror of
a hopeless love.  Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window; Will
followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they
stood, with their hands clasped, like two children, looking out on the
storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll above them,
and the rain began to pour down.  Then they turned their faces towards
each other, with the memory of his last words in them, and they did not
loose each other's hands.

"There is no hope for me," said Will.  "Even if you loved me as well as
I love you--even if I were everything to you--I shall most likely
always be very poor: on a sober calculation, one can count on nothing
but a creeping lot.  It is impossible for us ever to belong to each
other.  It is perhaps base of me to have asked for a word from you.  I
meant to go away into silence, but I have not been able to do what I
meant."

"Don't be sorry," said Dorothea, in her clear tender tones.  "I would
rather share all the trouble of our parting."

Her lips trembled, and so did his.  It was never known which lips were
the first to move towards the other lips; but they kissed tremblingly,
and then they moved apart.

The rain was dashing against the window-panes as if an angry spirit
were within it, and behind it was the great swoop of the wind; it was
one of those moments in which both the busy and the idle pause with a
certain awe.

Dorothea sat down on the seat nearest to her, a long low ottoman in the
middle of the room, and with her hands folded over each other on her
lap, looked at the drear outer world.  Will stood still an instant
looking at her, then seated himself beside her, and laid his hand on
hers, which turned itself upward to be clasped.  They sat in that way
without looking at each other, until the rain abated and began to fall
in stillness.  Each had been full of thoughts which neither of them
could begin to utter.

But when the rain was quiet, Dorothea turned to look at Will.  With
passionate exclamation, as if some torture screw were threatening him,
he started up and said, "It is impossible!"

He went and leaned on the back of the chair again, and seemed to be
battling with his own anger, while she looked towards him sadly.

"It is as fatal as a murder or any other horror that divides people,"
he burst out again; "it is more intolerable--to have our life maimed by
petty accidents."

"No--don't say that--your life need not be maimed," said Dorothea,
gently.

"Yes, it must," said Will, angrily.  "It is cruel of you to speak in
that way--as if there were any comfort.  You may see beyond the misery
of it, but I don't. It is unkind--it is throwing back my love for you
as if it were a trifle, to speak in that way in the face of the fact.
We can never be married."

"Some time--we might," said Dorothea, in a trembling voice.

"When?" said Will, bitterly.  "What is the use of counting on any
success of mine?  It is a mere toss up whether I shall ever do more
than keep myself decently, unless I choose to sell myself as a mere pen
and a mouthpiece.  I can see that clearly enough.  I could not offer
myself to any woman, even if she had no luxuries to renounce."

There was silence.  Dorothea's heart was full of something that she
wanted to say, and yet the words were too difficult.  She was wholly
possessed by them: at that moment debate was mute within her.  And it
was very hard that she could not say what she wanted to say.  Will was
looking out of the window angrily.  If he would have looked at her and
not gone away from her side, she thought everything would have been
easier.  At last he turned, still resting against the chair, and
stretching his hand automatically towards his hat, said with a sort of
exasperation, "Good-by."

"Oh, I cannot bear it--my heart will break," said Dorothea, starting
from her seat, the flood of her young passion bearing down all the
obstructions which had kept her silent--the great tears rising and
falling in an instant: "I don't mind about poverty--I hate my wealth."

In an instant Will was close to her and had his arms round her, but she
drew her head back and held his away gently that she might go on
speaking, her large tear-filled eyes looking at his very simply, while
she said in a sobbing childlike way, "We could live quite well on my
own fortune--it is too much--seven hundred a-year--I want so little--no
new clothes--and I will learn what everything costs."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Dorothea is too agitated to set herself at any one task; she tries to memorize places on a map, before Miss Noble comes in, to greet her. Miss Noble tells her that Will is there, waiting outside, to greet her; Dorothea decides that she cannot turn him away, and has him sent into her. Dorothea is a little formal in her greeting to Will; he still cannot fathom whether she loves him or not. Will speaks to her carefully, hoping that she was not offended by the gossip attaching him to Bulstrode; Dorothea, however, knows that he has acted correctly in all things, and brightens up with affection. Will tries to say goodbye, but then is affected by passion; he says they cannot be together, yet it is a cruel thing. Dorothea decides that she cannot let him go again; she would rather give up the wealth that Casaubon has left her and go with Will, with the aid of her own fortune to support them.