"THE DISTRESS OF HER POSITION BECAME EVERY MOMENT MORE ACUTE" (p. 268).
Strange! A merry laugh came out of the thicket near to her; but though she searched with her eyes in every direction she could discover nobody who could have given it utterance.
Strange again! It flashed upon her mind that the mere expression of disdain for men was wanting in force if it were not emphasised by the demonstration of woman's power to do absolutely without them.
Upon the strength of this reasoning, she at once seized the axe, and after many days of hard work, succeeded in felling the hollow tree and giving to it something of the shape of a boat, in which, by the aid of a roughly fashioned pair of oars, she rowed herself across to the island-kingdom, where she hoped to find the realisation of all her aspirations for a state of existence in which men were wholly ignored.
Not once or twice, but over and over again, she succeeded in reaching the border of the opalesque haze in which the kingdom of Diaphanosia was perpetually veiled; but she was as often beaten back by an irresistible current which set towards the shore from which she had started.
On one of these fruitless voyages her strength utterly left her, and she sank down in the bottom of her boat insensible, the oars dropping from her nerveless hands and drifting away; so that, even if she had immediately returned to consciousness, she would have found herself helplessly at the mercy of the sea.
When she did recover from her state of insensibility, it was to discover herself lying upon a mossy bank on the skirt of the forest, a handsome and superbly dressed young man tending her with delicately eager solicitude.
She did not attempt to rise or to speak; she thought she was sleeping and dreaming—the only thing strange in her state of feeling being that the near presence of a man provoked no sense of repugnance or resentment.
"Thank Heaven!" said the young gentleman, in a tone of intense relief, as he saw her open her eyes. "For awhile I have been terribly afraid that my efforts to rescue you had been unavailing."