return, for a potion prepared by the physician stood waiting for him, and
she feared he would forget it if she did not remind him.

By the end of the second hour sleep overcame her, and she felt as if the
chair she was sitting on was giving way under her, and as if it was
sinking at first slowly and then quicker and quicker, into a deep abyss
that opened beneath her. Looking up for help in her dream, she could see
nothing but her father's face, which looked aside with indifference. As
her dream went on she called him and called him again, but for a long
time he did not seem to hear her. At last he looked down at her and when
he perceived her he smiled, but instead of helping her he picked up
stones and clods from the edge of the gulf and threw them on her hands
with which she had clutched the brambles and roots that grew out of the
rift of the rocks. She entreated him to cease, implored him, shrieked to
him to spare her, but not a muscle moved in the face above her; it seemed
set in a vacant smile, and even his heart was dead too, for he ruthlessly
flung down now a pebble, now a clod, one after the other, till her hands
were losing their last feeble hold and she was on the point of falling
into the fatal gulf below. Her own cry of terror aroused her, but during
the brief process of returning from her dream to actuality, she saw
through swiftly parting mists--only for an instant, and yet quite plainly
--the tall grass of a meadow, spangled with ox-eye daisies, white and
gold, with violet-hued blue bells and scarlet poppies, among which she
was lying--as in a soft green bed, while near the sward lay a sparkling
blue lake and behind it rose beautiful swelling hills, with red cliffs,
and green groves, and meadows bright in the clear sunshine. A clear sky,
across which a soft breeze gently blew light silvery flakes of cloud,
bent over the lovely but fleeting picture, which she could not compare
with anything she had ever seen near her own home.