There is no other joy so fine and none so fleeting, perhaps, as this stirring of our individual energies by the breath of that mighty living force that recreates us each morning after the apathy of night. At this instant of recognition the day belongs to us and the air resounds with a pæan of wonderful hopes and promises, as if our single personality were the only concern of nature. Soon the responsibilities of our relations to others crowd out this sense of individual life and the momentary Sabbath-peace of the soul is broken up by the work-a-day hum of jarring machinery. So, swift upon the exaltation aroused in Amanda by the influence of an unshared sunrise, came the disappointing sense of check and defeat to her own purposes and plans, which had been wrought within the last few hours. None of the reasons that led to her decision to go away and begin a new life remote from these surroundings had altered. Fauquier County was still limited, narrow, and hostile to Nellie's mental development; Benvenew was still poverty-stricken, and no new resources suggested themselves. And Vivian was still the old Vivian, with all his vices upon his head, and likely with the first hour of returning health to repel and disgust her, just as he had been doing all along. Every condition she had dwelt upon as urgent cause of flight was unchanged; and yet, with lightning swiftness was accomplished that resolution, paralleled in the experience of every one of us, by which the one whose offenses had banished him from her consideration, was made through sudden appeal to pity, the object of first importance to her.
As Amanda turned from the window and approached the bed where Vivian was now opening eyes in which the light of reason was absent, she turned her back upon all the rosy hopes that had been dwelling in her imagination, and took up the burden of a hard and painful duty. For she was aware through the prophetic insight that flashes through our acts into the region of remote consequences, that out of the immediate obligation of nursing her husband back to health and strength, would grow ties that would cramp and fetter all her future. Her only defense against whatever his will might impose upon her had been in her feeling of antagonism. For, strong and self-poised as she was, she had the woman's weak-point of an intense susceptibility, and if she had achieved the wish to be hard as nails, the first touch from a beseeching hand would inevitably break through the crust and betray the lurking softness beneath.
It was with a quiver of fright that she realized, as she raised Vivian's head upon her arm and felt him weakly recline against it, that the barriers would soon be broken down between them, and that there might enter into her heart, destitute of respect and esteem that pitiful substitute for true affection, a self-immolating tenderness that leads judgment into abysses where poisonous plants grow, exhaling odors detrimental to sanity and health. The flash of fear came and went, and no one, save her mother, ever knew what Amanda's concession meant to her, and what it involved.
Miss Evy had passed a sleepless night, and at six o'clock she crept softly down to the door of Vivian's bedroom and stood for a moment before she knocked, listening for sounds that she dreaded to hear, the sound of incoherent murmuring, in femininely sweet tones.
"Come in," Amanda called, and she entered, with a scared, anxious face and timid step.
"He's out of his mind, ain't he?" she queried pitifully, and Amanda made an assenting movement of the head.
Vivian's delirium was not violent at first, and he submitted to requirements with a gentleness that was like his ordinary courtesy. But he recognized no one for many days, showing a preference, however, for Amanda and her mother, over all the others who came in to offer their services. His wife seemed to have a peculiarly soothing effect upon him, and with another variation from his attitude when in health, he was impatient and fretful whenever his mother appeared. Mrs. Thomas took this hard, and in the parlor of the cottage, where she sat most of the time seeing callers, she bewailed the ingratitude of her son, and whispered dark sayings against Amanda—"who wuz tryin' now to throw dust in people's eyes by makin' out she was dreadful fond o' him, when if the truth wuz told—"
It seemed as if everybody within ten miles around came with offers of help and utterances of sympathy; the last delivered only to Mrs. Thomas and Miss Evy, for few persons saw Amanda. For ten days she watched by Vivian's bedside with a devotion that completely revolutionized all Miss Evy's ideas of her, and astonished even her mother. And when, from the very jaws of death, Vivian came slowly back to life, he had become to her like a dear child, whom it was her duty to shield and minister to, and treat with a tenderness unmingled with criticism. Whether this mental attitude would continue was a question. Mrs. Powell held counsel about it with herself, and made it a subject of prayer: "That Mandy would go on bein' forgivin' an' lovin' an' that all'd go well betwixt her an' her husband."
The exquisite season of Indian Summer, the fifth season of the year in the mountain region of Virginia, set in early, and one morning when the air was so soft that it brought to the surface all the gentle, kindly impulses of hearts that stiffen and congeal under the rough touch of frost, Amanda found herself curiously moved as she stepped lightly about Vivian's room, waiting for him to awake.