"
"Oh, don't you think they could?" said Dinah wistfully. "I wish there
were more people in the world like you."
"No one ever thought of saying that to me before," said Scott.
CHAPTER XXII
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
After that interview with Scott there followed a long, long period of
pain and weakness for Dinah. She who had never known before what it meant
to be ill went down to the Valley of the Shadow and lingered there for
many days and nights. And there came a time when those who watched beside
her began to despair of her ever turning back.
So completely had she lost touch with the ordinary things of life that
she knew but little of what went on around her, dwelling as it were
apart, conscious sometimes of agonizing pain, but more often of a
dreadful sinking as of one overwhelmed in the billows of an everlasting
sea. At such times she would cling piteously to any succouring hand,
crying to them to hold her up--only to hold her up. And if the hand were
the hand of Greatheart, she always found comfort at length and a sense of
security that none other could impart.
Her fancy played about him very curiously in those days. She saw him in
many guises,--as prince, as knight, as magician; but never as the mean
and insignificant figure which first had caught her attention on that
sunny morning before the fancy-dress ball.
This man who sat beside her bed of suffering for hours together because
she fretted when he went away, who held her up when the gathering billows
threatened to overwhelm her fainting soul, who prayed for her with the
utmost simplicity when she told him piteously that she could not pray for
herself, this man was above and beyond all ordinary standards.
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