“Her past a waste, her future void.”
Her life seemed to have come to a standstill. There seemed nothing to hope for in heaven or on earth.
There were days of such deep despondency that life seemed a burden too heavy to be borne, and she longed for death—days when the unrest of her soul craved the rest of oblivion in the grave.
There were moments, too, when athwart the utter darkness of her soul flashed the lightning of consciousness that she might change all this and bring renewed life, action and happiness to herself; that she might write to her husband, or return to her home and implore him to believe in her and to bear with her until she should be at liberty to clear up the mystery that rested as a cold, dark storm-cloud between them.
And at such moments she might have acted on the impulse and hastened back to Cloud Cliffs, but for the memory of his fierce, cruel, stinging words:
“I never loved you! I married you only to please my dying father. In a very few hours I shall leave this house, never to return while you desecrate it with your presence!”
Every time these words recurred to her mind they overwhelmed her with a fresh sense of unspeakable humiliation.
“Oh, no!” she said to herself—“no! my heart seems dying in my bosom, but I must not listen to its moan! I must not go back until he himself shall repent and retract and entreat me to return! I can die, but I cannot go back. I cannot.”
And indeed existence for Lilith was now a mere death in life.
All her efforts to obtain employment by advertising and by answering advertisements had signally failed. There seemed to be no use for her in the whole world. No one on earth seemed to want her in any capacity.