Longing, and yet afraid to die,
Patient though sorely tried!
I pledge you in this cup of grief,
Where floats the fennel’s bitter leaf!
The battle of our life is brief,
The alarm, the struggle, the relief;
Then sleep we side by side.
Longfellow.
Nea had to learn by bitter experience that the fruits of disobedience and deceit are like the apples of Sodom, fair to the sight, but mere ashes to the taste, and in her better mood she owned that her punishment was just.
Slowly and laboriously, with infinite care and pains, she set herself to unlearn the lessons of her life. For wealth she had poverty; for ease and luxury, privation and toil; but in all her troubles her strong will and pride sustained her; and though she suffered, and Heaven only knew how she suffered! she never complained or murmured until the end came.