Read "The Silent Woman" by Eliza Margaret Jane Humphreys online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The forces of life, long, stagnant, and inert, suddenly clamoured for re-admission within that half-shattered citadel representing Patience Quarn. She lifted herself on her pillows with new-born strength. She watched the daily miracle of sunrise and sunset with new interest, and new hope. She felt the warm and vital flood of health set loose in languid limb and pulse, and rejoiced in it. In five days she seemed to have regained what she had lost for five years. She slept, and sleep held no terrors, but was deep and dreamless. Food and nourishment were given her, and the dreaded nausea vanished. For a while she held thought and memory back by sheer force of will. Their time was not yet. With every throb of returning strength came return of resolution.
Life had crystallised itself into a hard, clear-cut fact. She could no longer dream or dally with it.