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spare it would have been the greatest cruelty. She felt like
poor Diana, and welcomed every sorrow, only wishing that
it would strike deep, for she was so unhappy that the
death-blow was her only hope.
Oh, if that was the end of all greatness—slavish
whimpering, lecherous raving, and craven terror!—then there
was no such thing as greatness. The hero she had dreamed
of, he rode through the portals of death with ringing spurs
and shining mail, with head bared and lance at rest, not with
fear in witless eyes and whining prayers on trembling lips.
Then there was no shining figure that she could dream of
in worshipping love, no sun that she could gaze on till the
world swam in light and rays and color before her blinded
eyes. It was all dull and flat and leaden, bottomless
triviality, lukewarm commonplace, and nothing else.
Such were her first thoughts. She seemed to have been
transported for a short time to a fairy-land, where the warm,
life-pregnant air had made her whole being unfold like an
exotic flower, flashing sunlight from every petal, breathing
fragrance in every vein, blissful in its own light and
scent, growing and growing, leaf upon leaf and petal upon
petal, in irresistible strength and fullness. But this was all
past. Her life was barren and void again; she was poor and
numb with cold. No doubt the whole world was like that,
and all the people likewise. And yet they went on living
in their futile bustle. Oh, her heart was sick with disgust
at seeing them flaunt their miserable rags and proudly listen
for golden music in their empty clatter.
Eagerly she reached for those treasured old books of
devotion that had so often been proffered her and as often
rejected. There was dreary solace in their stern words on
the misery of the world and the vanity of all earthly things,
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