ering as long and as sharply as they can.

It was hot in the sun; but only a warm breath of summer air
played about Elizabeth where she sat. The little waves of the
river glittered and shone and rolled lazily down upon the
channel, or curled up in rippling eddies towards the shore.
The sunlight was growing ardent upon the hills and the river;
but over Elizabeth's head the shade was still unbroken. A soft
aromatic smell came from the cedars, now and then broken in
upon by a faint puff of fresher air from the surface of the
water. Hardly any sound, but the murmur of the ripple at the
water's edge and the cheruping of busy grasshoppers upon the
lawn. Now and then a locust did sing out; he only said it was
August and that the sun was shining hot and sleepily
everywhere but under the cedar trees. His song was
irresistible. Elizabeth closed her eyes and listened to it, in
a queer kind of luxurious rest-taking which was had because
mind and body would have it. Pain was put away, in a sort; for
the senses of pain were blurred. The aromatic smell of the
evergreens was wafted about her; and then came a touch, a most
gentle touch, of the south river-breeze upon her face; and
then the long dreamy cry of the locust; and the soft plashing
sound of the water at her feet. All Elizabeth's faculties were
crying for sleep; and sleep came, handed in by the locust and
the summer air, and laid its kind touch of forgetfulness upon
mind and body. At first she lost herself leaning against the
cedar tree, waking up by turns to place herself better; and at
last yielding to the overpowering influences without and
within, she curled her head down upon a thick bed of moss at
her side and gave herself up to such rest as she might.

What sort of rest? Only the rest of the body, which had made a
truce with the mind for the purpose. A quiet which knew that
storms were not over, but which would be quiet nevertheless.
Elizabeth felt that, in her intervals of half-consciousness.
But all the closer she clung to her pillow of dry moss. She
had a dispensation from sorrow there. When her head left it,
it would be to ache again. It should not ache now. Sweet moss!
-- sweet summer air! -- sweet sound of plashing water! -- sweet
dreamy lullaby of the locust! -- Oh if they could put her to
sleep for ever! -- sing pain out and joy in! --

A vague, half-realized notion of the fight that must be gone
through before rest 'for ever' could in any wise be hoped for