Page 290 - middlemarch

her in that brooding abstraction which made her pose re-
markable. She did not really see the streak of sunlight on
the floor more than she saw the statues: she was inwardly
seeing the light of years to come in her own home and over
the English fields and elms and hedge-bordered highroads;
and feeling that the way in which they might be filled with
joyful devotedness was not so clear to her as it had been.
But in Dorothea’s mind there was a current into which all
thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to flow—the
reaching forward of the whole consciousness towards the
fullest truth, the least partial good. There was clearly some-
thing better than anger and despondency.