Night after night she suffered a martyrdom; but upon this particular occasion it seemed to her that she was in close communication with the unseen, and, with eyes wild and strained, she kept trying to pierce the darkness, lying in anticipation of some severe reproof for tarrying so long.
Hours had passed, but sleep would not come; and at last, in a desponding voice, she moaned—
“It is too much. I am only a poor weak woman. Isaac, Isaac, husband, my burden is greater than I can bear.”
The words she had uttered aloud startled her, and she lay trembling, but they seemed to have relieved her over-burdened heart, and a feeling of calm restfulness gradually stole over her, and she slept, with the tears slowly stealing from beneath her closed lids.
“Isaac, husband, for her sake don’t ask me to do this thing.”
The words came in a hurried whisper, telling too plainly that, even in sleep, the rest had not quite calmed her tortured brain, for the task was there, and she moaned again and again piteously, as if continuing her appeal for mercy.
But in her imagination there was none. Her eyes had hardly closed before she seemed to be back in the cottage listening to the dying man’s utterances, full of bigoted intolerance and hate, bidding her avenge him; and at last she started up in bed with a cry of horror, to sit there pressing her wet dark hair back from her brow, and staring wildly into the darkest corner of the room.
“Yes, I hear,” she said, in a hoarse whisper. “I have tried indeed; but you don’t know. I am only a poor, weak creature, and it is so hard—so hard, but I will—I will.”
She sat there for fully two hours rocking herself to and fro, weeping, praying, but finding no relief. She threw herself down at last, and for a few moments the cool pillow relieved the agony of her throbbing temples; but only for the time, and then it was as hot as her fevered head.
“If I could only sleep,” she groaned; “if I could only sleep and forget.”