Have any of you who read crept back to life from nearly beyond the grave?
Crept back to find it shorn of all that made it fair? After hours of
delirium to awaken in great weakness to a sense of hideous anguish and
loss--to the prospect of days of aching void and hopeless longing, to the
hourly, momentary sting of remembrance of things vaster than death, more
dear than life itself? If you have come through this valley of the shadow,
then you can know what the first days of returning consciousness meant to
Paul.
He never really questioned the finality of her decree, he _sensed_ it meant
parting for ever. And yet, with that spring of eternal hope which animates
all living souls, unbidden arguings and possibilities rose in his enfeebled
brain, and deepened his unrest. Thus his progr
