Life, after that first yielding of heart and brain, had been a delirium; then a conscious torture of mind and body; next a burden almost too great to bear; and then a dreamy lethargy. Heaven be praised for such moods; they are saviors of life and reason in crises such as this through which the stricken girl was passing.
Madness had wrought upon her, and her ravings had revealed some otherwise dark places and blanks in her story to her guardian and nurses. Pain had tortured her. Death wrestled with her, and then, because he could inspire her with no fear of him, because she mocked at his terrors and wooed him, fled away.
In his place came Life, to whom she gave no welcoming smile. But Life stayed, for Life is as regardless of our wishes as is Death.
Forms had hovered about her; kindly voices, sweet voices, had murmured at her bedside. At times, an angel had held the cooling draught to her thirsty lips. At last these dream-creatures resolved themselves into realities:
Doctor Vaughan, who had ministered to her with the solicitude of a brother, the gentleness of a woman, and the goodness of an angel.
Olive Girard who, leaving all other cares, was ever at her bedside, and who came to that place at a sacrifice of feeling, after a wrestling with pride, bringing a bitterness of memory, and a patient courage of heart, that the girl could not then realize.
Henry, too, black of skin, warm of heart; who waited in the outer court, and seemed to allow himself full and free respiration only when the girl was pronounced out of danger.
Out of danger! What a misapplication of words!
From the scene of conflict, at the last flutter of Death's gloomy mantle, comes the man of medicine; watch in hand, boots a tiptoe, face grave but triumphant. His voice bids a subdued farewell to the somberness proper to a probable death-bed, coming up just a note higher in the scale of solemnities, as it announces to the eager, trembling, waiting ones,
"The danger is past!"