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almost a numbness that made a comfortable shelter of her
sorrow.
Suddenly all was changed. Every nerve was strung to the
most acute sensitiveness, every vein throbbing with blood
athirst for life, and her fancy teemed like the desert air with
colorful images and luring forms. On such days she was
like a prisoner who sees youth slip by, spring after spring,
barren, without bloom, dull and empty, always passing,
never coming. The sum of time seemed to be counted out
with hours for pennies; at every stroke of the clock one
fell rattling at her feet, crumbled, and was dust, while she
would wring her hands in agonized life-hunger and scream
with pain.
She appeared but seldom at court or in the homes of her
family, for etiquette demanded that she should keep to the
house. Nor was she in the mood to welcome visitors, and
as they soon ceased coming, she was left entirely to herself.
This lonely brooding and fretting soon brought on an
indolent torpor, and she would sometimes lie in bed for days
and nights at a stretch, trying to keep in a state betwixt
waking and sleeping, which gave rise to fantastic visions.
Far clearer than the misty dream pictures of healthy sleep,
these images filled the place of the life she was missing.
Her irritability grew with every day, and the slightest
noise was torture. Sometimes she would be seized with the
strangest notions and with sudden mad impulses that might
almost raise a doubt of her sanity. Indeed, there was
perhaps but the width of a straw between madness and that
curious longing to do some desperate deed, merely for the
sake of doing it, without the least reason or even real desire
for it.
Sometimes, when she stood at the open window,
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