bestowed the long-withheld and coveted boon when it was empty of value
or was but as a handful of spices to a shroud.

Perceiving the moisture in her look, Redworth understood that it was
foolish to talk rationally. But on her return to her beloved, the real
quality of the man had overcome her opposing state of sentiment, and she
spoke of him with an iteration and throb in the voice that set a singular
query whirring round Diana's ears. Her senses were too heavy for a
suspicion.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

CONVALESCENCE OF A HEALTHY MIND DISTRAUGHT

From an abandonment that had the last pleasure of life in a willingness
to yield it up, Diana rose with her friend's help in some state of
fortitude, resembling the effort of her feet to bear the weight of her
body. She plucked her courage out of the dust to which her heart had
been scattered, and tasked herself to walk as the world does. But she
was indisposed to compassionate herself in the manner of the burdened
world. She lashed the creature who could not raise a head like others,
and made the endurance of torture a support, such as the pride of being
is to men. She would not have seen any similarity to pride in it; would
have deemed it the reverse. It was in fact the painful gathering of the
atoms composing pride. For she had not only suffered; she had done
wrongly: and when that was acknowledged, by the light of her sufferings
the wrong-doing appeared gigantic, chorussing eulogies of the man she had