She sat back in silence for some minutes, looking now at the fire too,
now at the figure opposite, noticing, however, that the helplessness
seemed gone. His hands dangled no longer; he sat upright, his hands
clasped, yet with a curious look of stiffness and unnaturalness.
Once more she began deliberately to attempt to gather her forces; but
the will, it appeared, had lost its nervous grasp of the faculties. It
had no longer that quick grip and command with which she had begun.
Passivity rather than activity seemed her strength....
Then suddenly and, as it appeared, inevitably, without movement or
sound, she began internally to pray, closing her eyes, careless, and
indeed unfearing. It seemed her one hope. And behind the steady
movement of her will--sufficient at least to elicit acts of
petition--her intellect observed a thousand images and thoughts. She
perceived the silence of the house and of the breathless spring night
outside; she considered Mr. Cathcart in the inn across the road, Mrs.
Baxter upstairs: she contemplated the future as it would be on the
morrow--Easter Day, was it not?--the past, and scarcely at all the
present. She relinquished all plans, all intentions and hopes: she
leaned simply upon the supernatural, like a tired child, and looked at
pictures.
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