her once more. She felt the polished surface of the wood under her hand,
and saw all the pretty ornamentation, the inlaid-work, the delicate
carvings, which she knew so well; they swam in her eyes a little, as if
they were part of some phantasmagoria about her, existing only in her
vision. Yet the smooth surface resisted her touch; and when she withdrew
a step from it, it stood before her solidly and square, as it had stood
always--a glory to the place. She put forth her hands upon it, and could
have traced the waving lines of the exquisite work, in which some artist
soul had worked itself out in the old times; but though she thus saw it
and felt, she could not with all her endeavors find the handle of the
drawer, the richly-wrought knob of ivory, the little door that opened
into the secret place. How long she stood by it, attempting again and
again to find what was as familiar to her as her own hand, what was
before her, visible in every line, what she felt with fingers which began
to tremble, she could not tell. Time did not count with her as with
common men. She did not grow weary, or require refreshment or rest, like
those who were still of this world. Put at length her head grew giddy and
her heart failed. A cold despair took possession of her soul. She could
do nothing, then,--nothing; neither by help of man, neither by use of her
own faculties, which were greater and clearer than ever before. She sank
down upon the floor at the foot of that old toy, which had pleased her in
the softness of her old age, to which she had trusted the fortunes of
another; by which, in wantonness and folly she had sinned, she had
sinned! And she thought she saw standing round her companions in the land
she had left, saying, "It is impossible, impossible!" with infinite pity
in their eyes; and the face of him who had given her permission to come,
yet who had said no word to her to encourage her in what was against
nature. And there came into her heart a longing to fly, to get home, to
be back in the land where her fellows were, and her appointed place. A
child lost, how pitiful that is! without power to reason and divine how