In Romola, George Eliot's heroine decides, not without a great deal of conscience- searching, to leave her home city of Florence, and to leave Tito, the husband who had disappointed and disillusioned her, and whom she no longer loves or respects. Rather than take a conventional path of flight for an unhappy wife - taking refuge with friends, or in a cloister - “she had invented a lot for herself - to go to the most learned woman in the world, Cassandra Fedele, at Venice, and ask her how an instructed woman would support herself in a lonely life there” (36). The life that lies ahead of her may be one of loneliness and endurance, but it will be one of freedom. As she leaves the city in a wintry dawn, the sun bursts forth in an apparent symbol of hope, “a divine presence stirring all those inarticulate sensibilities which are our deepest life” (36). The installment - installment 7, in the form in which Romola originally appeared in the Cornhill Magazine - concluded with her facing away from Florence and pausing for a moment, “free and alone. ”