He looked wonderingly at the electric white face, and something in its chill radiance reminded him of the borealis light, that waves its ghostly banners over a cold midnight sky.

“God grant that I may be in error concerning your disease; and that threescore years and ten may be alloted you, to embody the airy dreams you love so well.  I repeat, if you wish to prolong your days, give yourself more rest.  I can do you little good; still, if at any time you fancy that I can aid or relieve you, do not hesitate to send for me.  I shall come to see you as a friend, who reads and loves all that has yet fallen from your pen.  God help and bless you, child!”

As he left the room she locked the door, and walked slowly back to the low mantelpiece.  Resting her arms on the black marble, she laid her head down upon them, and ambition and death stared face to face, and held grim parley over the coveted prey.

Taking the probable measure of her remaining days, Edna fearlessly fronted the future, and pondered the possibility of crowding into two years the work which she had designed for twenty.

To tell the girl to “rest,” was a mockery; the tides of thought ebbed and flowed as ceaselessly as those of ocean, and work had become a necessity of her existence.  She was far, far beyond the cool, quiet palms of rest, far out on the burning sands; and the Bahr-Sheitan rippled and glittered and beckoned, and she panted and pressed on.

One book was finished, but before she had completed it the form and features of another struggled in her busy brain, and she longed to put them on paper.

The design of the second book appeared to her partial eyes almost perfect, and the first seemed insignificant in comparison.  Trains of thought that had charmed her, making her heart throb and her temples flush; and metaphors that glowed as she wrote them down, ah! how tame and trite all looked now, in the brighter light of a newer revelation!  The attained, the achieved tarnished in her grasp.  All behind was dun; all beyond clothed with a dazzling glory that lured her on.

Once the fondest hopes of her heart had been to finish the book now in the publisher’s hands; but ere it could be printed, other characters, other aims, other scenes usurped her attention.  If she could only live long enough to incarnate the new ideal!

Moreover, she knew that memory would spring up and renew its almost intolerable torture the moment that she gave herself to aimless reveries; and she felt that her sole hope of peace of mind, her only rest, was in earnest and unceasing labor.  Subtle associations, merciless as the chains of Bonnivard, bound her to a past which she was earnestly striving to forget; and she continually paced as far off as her shackles would permit, sternly refusing to sit down meekly at the foot of the stake.  She worked late at night until her body was exhausted, because she dreaded to lie awake, tossing helplessly on her pillow; haunted by precious recollections of days gone by forever.