was
wretched enough. She promised not to leave the house, and Dorothy went.
Many times before she returned had Juliet fled from the sounds of
imagined approach, and taken refuge in the musty dusk of the room
withdrawn. When at last Dorothy came, she found her in it trembling.

She came, bringing a basket with every thing needful for breakfast. She
had not told her father any thing: he was too simple, she said to
herself, to keep a secret with comfort; and she would risk any thing
rather than discovery while yet she did not clearly know what ought to
be done. Her version of the excellent French proverb--_Dans le doute,
abstiens-toi_--was, _When you are not sure, wait_--which goes a little
further, inasmuch as it indicates expectation, and may imply faith. With
difficulty she prevailed upon her to take some tea, and a little bread
and butter, feeding her like a child, and trying to comfort her with
hope. Juliet sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, the very
picture of despair, white like alabaster, rather than marble--with a
bluish whiteness. Her look was of one utterly lost.

"We'll let the fire out now," said Dorothy; "for the sun is shining in
warm, and there had better be no smoke. The wood is rather scarce too. I
will get you some more, and here are matches: you can light it again
when you please."

She then made her a bed on the floor with a quantity of wood shavings,
and some shawls she had brought, and when she had lain down upon it,
kneeled beside her, and covering her face with her hands, tried to pray.
But it seemed as if all the misery of humanity was laid upon her, and
God would not speak: not a sound would come from her throat, till she
burst into tears and sobs. It struck a strange chord in the soul of the
wife to hear the maiden weeping over her. But it was no private trouble,
it was the great need common to all men that opened the fountain of her
tears. It was hunger after the light that slays the darkness, after a
comfort to confront every woe, a life to lift above death, an antidote
to all wrong. It was one of the groanings of the spirit that can not be
uttered in words articulate, or even formed into thoughts defined. But
Juliet was filled only with the thought of herself and her husband, and
the tears of her friend but bedewed the leaves of her bitterness, did
not reach the dry roots of her misery.

Dorothy's spirit revived when she found herself once more alone in the
park on her way home