Katie kept stubbornly a smiling
silence, and I was fain to obey my new-found guardian angels.
What need of many words? Slowly, and with relapses into insensibility,
I passed, like one who recovers from drowning, through the painful gate
of birth into another life. The fury of passion had been replaced by a
delicious weakness. The thunder-clouds had passed roaring down the wind,
and the calm bright holy evening was come. My heart, like a fretful child,
had stamped and wept itself to sleep. I was past even gratitude; infinite
submission and humility, feelings too long forgotten, absorbed my whole
being. Only I never dared meet Eleanor's eye. Her voice was like an angel's
when she spoke to me--friend, mother, sister, all in one. But I had a dim
recollection of being unjust to her--of some bar between us.
Katie and Crossthwaite, as they sat by me, tender and careful nurses both,
told me, in time, that to Eleanor I owed all my comforts. I could not thank
her--the debt was infinite, inexplicable. I felt as if I must speak all my
heart or none; and I watched her lavish kindness with a sort of sleepy,
passive wonder, like a new-born babe.
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