“How much longer do you suppose your constitution will endure such merciless taxation?”
“I know very little about these things, and care still less, but as Horne Tooke said, when a foreigner inquired how much treason an Englishman might venture to write without 220 being hanged, ‘I cannot inform you just yet, but I am trying.’”
“Has life become such an intolerable burden that you are impatient to shake it off?”
“Even so, Dr. Grey. When Elsie dies the last link will have snapped, and I trust I shall not long survive her. If I prayed at all, it would be for speedy death.”
“If you prayed at all, existence would not prove so wearisome; for resignation would cure half your woes.”
“Confine your prescriptions to the body,—that is tangible, and may be handled and scrutinized; but venture no nostrums for a heart and soul of which you know nothing. Once I was almost a Moslem in the frequency and fervor of my prayers; but now, the only petition I could force myself to offer would be that prayer of Epictetus, ‘Lead me, Zeus and Destiny, whithersoever I am appointed to go; I will follow without wavering; even though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow, all the same.’”
Dr. Grey sighed heavily, and answered,—
“It is painful to hear from feminine lips a fatalism so grim as to make all prayer a mockery; and it would seem that the loss of those dear to you, would have insensibly and unavoidably drawn your heart heavenward, in search of its transplanted idols.”
He knew from the sudden spasm that seized her calm features, and shuddered through her tall figure, that he had touched, perhaps too rudely, some chord in her nature which—
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“Made the coiled memory numb and cold, That slept in her heart like a dreaming snake, Drowsily lift itself, fold by fold, And gnaw, and gnaw hungrily, half-awake.” |