[_Exit_.
_Helen_. I am awake now. Watched me in the glen?--followed me home?
Those woods are full of them.--But what has turned their wild eyes on
me?
It is but one day longer;--we have counted many, in peril and fear, and
_this_, is the last;--even now how softly the fearful time wastes. _One
day!_--Oh God, thou only knowest what its shining walls encircle. (_She
leans on the window, musing silently_.) Two years ago I stood here, and
prayed to die.-On that same tree my eye rested then. With what visions
of hope I played under it once, building bowers for fairies I verily
thought would come, and dreaming, with yearning heart, of glorious and
beautiful things this world _hath not_. But, that wretched day, through
blinding tears, I saw the sunlight on its glossy leaves, and I said,
'let me see that light no more.' Surely the bitterness is deep when that
which hath colored all our unfolded being, is a weariness. For what more
hath life for me I thought, its lesson is learned and its power is
spent,--it can please, and it can trouble me no more; and why should I
stay here in vain and wearily?
It was sad enough, indeed, to see the laughing spring returning again,
when the everlasting winter had set in within, to link with each change
of the varied year, sweet with a life's memories, such mournfulness;
laying by, one by one, all hope's blessed spells, withered and broken
forever,--the moonlight, the songs of birds, the blossom showers of
April, the green and gold of autumn's sunset,--it was sad, but it was
not in vain.
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