There was a purplish shadow under her soft, dark eyes, which I had not observed before, and her figure looked thin and drooping.

I gazed into the sad, loving depths of her eyes, till mine were blinded with tears, when throwing my arms across her lap, I laid my face upon them, and wept and sobbed as if the doom of the motherless were already mine.
"Grief does not kill, my Gabriella," she said, tenderly caressing me.
"It is astonishing how much the human heart can bear without breaking.
Sorrow may dry up, drop by drop, the fountain of life, but it is generally the work of years.

The heart lives, though every source of joy be dead,--lives without one well-spring of happiness to quench its burning thirst,--lives in the midst of desolation, darkness, and despair.

Oh, my Gabriella," she continued, with a burst of feeling that swept over her with irresistible power, and bowed her as before a stormy gust, "would to God that we might die together,--that the same almighty mandate would free us both from this prison-house of sorrow and of sin.
I have prayed for resignation,--I have prayed for faith; but, O my God! I am rebellious, I am weak, I have suffered and struggled so long." She spoke in a tone of physical as well as menial agony.

I was looking up in her face, and it seemed as if a dark shadow rolled over it.