st aloud, on the journey from
Devon to London. The landscape slipping under her eyes, with flashing
grey pools and light silver freshets, little glades, little copses,
farms, and meadows rounding away to spires of village churches under blue
hills, would not let her sink, heavy as was the spirit within her, and
dead to everything as she desired to be. Here, a great strange old oak
spread out its arms and seemed to hold the hurrying train a minute. When
gone by, Emilia thought of it as a friend, and that there, there, was the
shelter and thick darkness she had hoped she might be flying to. Or the
reach of a stream was seen, and in the middle of it one fair group of
clouds, showing distance beyond distance in colour. Emilia shut her
sight, and tried painfully to believe that there were no distances for
her. This was an easy task when the train stopped. It was surprising to
her then why the people moved. The whistle of the engine and rush of the
scenery set her imagination anew upon the horror of being motionless.

"My voice! I have my voice!" The exclamation recurred at intervals, as a
quick fear, that bubbled up from blind sensation, of her being utterly
abandoned, and a stray thing carrying no light, startled her. Darkness
she still had her desire for; but not to be dark in the darkness. She
looked back on the recent night as a lake of fire, through which she had
plunged; and of all the faculties about her, memory had suffered most, so
that it could recall no images of what had happened, but lay against its
black corner a shuddering bundle of nerves. The varying fields and woods
and waters offering themselves to her in the swiftness, were as wine
dashed to her lips, which could not be dead to it. The wish to be of some
worth began a painful quickening movement. At first she could have sobbed
with the keen anguish that instantaneously beset her. For--"If I am of
worth, who looks on me?" was her outcry, and the darkness she had
previously coveted fell with the strength of a mace on her forehead; but
the creature's heart struggled further, and by-and-by in despite of her
the pulses sprang a clear outlook on hope. It struck through her like the
first throb of a sword-cut. She tried to blind herself to it; the face of
hope was hateful.

This conflict of the baffled spirit of youth with its forceful flood of
being continued until it seemed that Emilia was lifted through the fiery
circles into daylight; her last cry being as h