Vain effort! Even while the words
passed her lips, his arms, which had been pressed over her, relaxed; his
head grew heavier on her bosom. In the despair of the moment, she tore
herself from him, and looked round to seek the help that none were near
to afford. The cup of water, the last provision of food, attracted her
eye. With quick instinct she caught them up. Hope, success, salvation,
lay in those miserable relics. She pressed the food into his mouth; she
moistened his parched lips, his dry brow, with the water. During one
moment of horrible suspense she saw him still insensible; then the vital
functions revived; his eyes opened again and fixed famine-struck on the
wretched nourishment before him. He devoured it ravenously; he drained
the cup of water to its last drop; he sank back again on the couch. But
now the torpid blood moved once more in his veins; his heart beat less
and less feebly: he was saved. She saw it as she bent over him--saved
by the lost child in the hour of her return! It was a sensation of
ecstatic triumph and gratitude which no woeful remembrances had power to
embitter in its bright, sudden birth.
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