But before she comes to that, she has many expedients.

The mind does not know what diet it can feed on until it has been brought to the starvation point.

Its experience is like that of those who have been long drifting about on rafts or in long-boats.

There is nothing out of which it will not contrive to get some sustenance.

A person of note, long held captive for a political offence, is said to have owed the preservation of his reason to a pin, out of which he contrived to get exercise and excitement by throwing it down carelessly on the dark floor of his dungeon, and then hunting for it in a series of systematic explorations until he had found it.
Perhaps the most natural thing Myrtle Hazard could have done would have been to go crazy, and be sent to the nearest asylum, if Providence, which in its wisdom makes use of the most unexpected agencies, had not made a special provision for her mental welfare.