Ellen fretted, and wished she would begin, little knowing in her ignorance that her lady would have given all she was worth if she could have begun again; that she had begun to wonder despairingly if all that artistic power in which she had once rejoiced, and concerning which she had been so ambitious, were quenched and gone. It seemed as if those powers had received some paralysing blow. It was in vain that she attempted to resume her art, seeking, with a natural, healthy impulse after some occupation which should divert her mind from the things it incessantly dwelt upon. Ellen did not know how, when one attempt after another had failed; when she had tried, and no charm, no interest dawned, nothing but dull, dead, mechanical strokes, without meaning or inspiration, she had thrown down her palette, and wept scalding tears of grief and mortification, wondering bitterly if it were always to be thus. She read some words one day which sent a chill to her heart–what if they were prophetic?
‘Dark the shrine, and dumb the fount of song thence welling,
Save for words more sad than tears of blood, which said:
Tell the King, on earth has fallen the glorious dwelling,
And the water springs which spake, are quenched and dead.
Not a cell is left the god, no roof, no cover.
In his hand the prophet-laurel flowers no more.’
Thus the winter slowly passed away, and she grew more and more despondent, thinking miserably that she was failing in every way: unable to paint, convinced that she felt no return of the generous love which had taken her by the hand when she was verily ‘friendless and an outcast;’ conscious, with a feeling of guilty shame, that the chief interest of her life lay in those letters from Avice Wellfield, in which the girl poured out the whole history of her every-day life–all her hopes and fears, and her impressions of those around her–lamenting that there was one person, and one only, who seemed to be, as she said, ‘above suspicion of being either morbid, or unhappy, or an impostor, or a victim,’ and that one John Leyburn, over whose deficiencies of manner the fastidious young lady made constant moan.
Rudolf, during the whole winter, came very seldom, and stayed for a very short time–never longer than a couple of hours. Each time that she saw him, Sara felt more constrained, more guilty, knew less what to say, or how to look, while his composure remained as imperturbable as ever.
And thus, after what had seemed an almost endless winter, spring appeared.