Page:Eliot - Middlemarch, vol. IV, 1872.djvu/224

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214
MIDDLEMARCH.

ness was silent. Open-minded as she was, she nevertheless shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness, as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, "How much is only slander and false suspicion?" and he did not say, "I am innocent."