Part One Chapter 22 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. She looked up to him with reverence, as one of colossal strength who had power with God.