Yet could she conceive life such as this prolonging itself into the hopeless years, renunciation her strength and her reward, duty a grinning skeleton at her bedside?
It grew harder daily.

More than a year ago she thought that the worst was over, and since then had known the solace of self-forgetful idealisms, of ascetic striving.

It was all illusion, the spinning of a desolate heart.

There was no help now, for she knew herself and the world.

Foolish, foolish child, who with her own hand had flung away the jewel of existence like a thing of no price! Her lot appeared single in its haplessness.