And after bidding her sister good-bye with a merry face, Thyrza would go up to her room, and sink down in weariness of body and soul, and weep her fill of bitter tears.

The nights were so long.  She never lay down before twelve o’clock, knowing that it was useless; then she would hear the heavy-tongued bells tolling each hour till nearly dawn.  It was like the voice of a remorseless enemy.  ’I am striking the hour of Two.  You think that you will not hear me when I strike next; you weep and pray that sleep may close your ears against me.  But wait and see!’ She would sometimes, in extremity of suffering, fling her body down, and let her arms fall straight, and whisper to herself:  ’I look now so like death, that perchance death will come and take me.’  That she might die soon was her constant longing.

There were times when her youth asserted itself and bade her strive, bade her put away the vain misery and look out again into the world of which she had seen so little.  A few weeks ago she had rejoiced in the acquiring of knowledge, and longed to make the chambers of her mind rich from the fields to which she had been guided, and which lay so sunny-flowered before her.  But that was when she had looked forward to sharing all with her second and dearer self.  Now, when her thoughts strayed, it was to gather the flowers of deadly fragrance which grow in the garden of despair.  The brief glimpses of health made the woe which followed only darker.

A strange, unreal hope, an illusion of her tortured mind, even now sometimes visited her.  It was certain that Egremont knew where she lived; it might be that even yet he would come.  Perhaps Miss Newthorpe would not receive him as he hoped.  Perhaps Mrs. Ormonde would have pity, and would tell him the truth, and then he could not let her perish of vain longing.  What other could love him as she did?  Who else thought of him:  ’You are all to me; in life or death there is nothing for me but you?’ If he knew that, he would come to her.

She had read a story somewhere of someone being drawn to her who loved him by the very force of her passionate longing.  In the dread nights she wondered if such a thing were possible.  She would lie still, and fix her mind on him, till all of her seemed to have passed away save that one thought.  She was back again in the library, helping to put books on the shelves.  Oh, that was no two years ago; it was yesterday, this morning!  Not a tone of his voice had escaped her memory.  She had only to think of the moment when he held his hand to her and said, ‘Let us be friends,’ and her heart leaped now as it had leaped then.  Could not her passion reach him, wherever he was?  Could he sleep peacefully through nights which for her were one long anguish?

So it went on to winter, and now she had more rest; her brain was dulled with the foul black atmosphere; she slept more, though a sleep which seemed to weigh her down, an unhealthful torpor.  The passion of her misery had burned itself out.