Chapter CXCVIII: Section 8: Thyrsis received a couple of letters at the same time as the

telegram, and he took the next train for the city. It is said that a drowning man sees before him in a few moments the panorama of his whole life; but to Thyrsis were given three hours in which to recall the events of his love for Corydon. He had every reason to believe that he would find her dying; and such pangs of suffering as came to him he had never known before. He was in a crowded car, and he would not shed a tear; but he sat, crouched in a heap and staring before him, fairly quivering with pent-up and concentrated grief. God, how he loved her! What a spirit of pure flame she was--what a creature from another sky! What martyrdom she had dared for him, and how cruelly she had been punished for her daring! And now, this was the end; she was dying--perhaps dead! How was he to live without her--in the bare and barren future that he saw stretching out before him?

Flashes of memory would come to him, waves of torment roll over him. He would recall her gestures, the curves of her face, the tones of her voice, the songs that she had sung; and then would come a choking in his throat, and he would clench his hands, as a runner in the last moments of a desperate race. He thought of her as he had seen her last. He had gone away, careless and unthinking--how blind he had been! The things that he had not said to her, and that he might have said so easily! The love he had not uttered, the pardons he had not procured! The yearnings and consecrations that had remained unspoken all through their lives--ah God, what a tragedy of impotence and failure their lives had been!

Then before his soul came troops of memories, each one a fiend with a whip of fire; the words of anger that he had spoken, the acts of cruelty that he had done! The times when he had made her weep, and had not comforted her! Oh, what a fool he had been--what a blind and wanton fool! And now--if he were to find her dead, and never be able to tell her of his shame and sorrow--he knew that he would carry the memories with him all his days, they would be like blazing scars upon his soul.

She was still alive, however; and so he took a deep breath, and went at his task. There was no question now of what he could bear to do, but of what he must do; she must be saved, and who could do it but himself? Who else could take her hands and whisper to her, and fill her with new courage and hope; who else could bid her to live--to live; could rouse the fainting spirit, and bid it rise up and set forth upon the agonizing journey?

So out of the very abyss they came together. But when at last the fight was won, when the doctors an-nounced that she was out of danger, Thyrsis was fairly reeling with exhaustion. When he left her in the afternoon, he would go to his hotel-room and lie down, utterly prostrated; he would lie awake the whole night through, wrestling with the demons of horror that he had brought with him from her bedside.

So he realized that he was on the verge of collapse, and that cost what it would, he must get away. Corydon’s mother was with her, and when she was strong enough to be moved, she would be taken back to the farm. He mentioned this to Corydon, and she replied that she would be satisfied. There would be Mr. Harding also, she said; Mr. Harding wrote that he would come up to the city, and do what he could to help her in her dire distress.