rds frightened her, for it
soon brought her near to that blinding darkness which she had already
met twice and had learned to dread; her present misfortune was
incomparably greater than those that had gone before, and she was sure
that if the outer night rose round her again it would take her soul
down into itself to eternal extinction. If she had been physically
stronger, she might have tried to call this a foolish delusion; weak
as she was, and growing daily weaker, it seemed as certain as that her
body must perish instantly if she walked over a precipice. The past
was distorted, the present had no meaning, and there was no future;
she vaguely understood Dante's idea that the body may be left on
earth, apparently alive, for years after the soul has departed from
it, for the evil Alberigo's spirit told the poet that his own body and
Branca d'Oria's were still animated by demons when their souls were
already in the torment of the eternal ice. But Angela felt rather as
if her living self were a mere senseless shell, uninhabited by any
spirit, bad or good, and moved by the mechanics of nature rather than
by her own will or another's.

Madame Bernard watched her with growing anxiety as the days and weeks
brought no change. The little lodging in Trastevere was very silent,
and Coco sat disconsolately drooping his wings on his perch when his
mistress was out, as she was during more than half the day, giving the
lessons by which she and Angela lived. The girl sometimes did not move
from her chair throughout the long morning any more than if she had
been paralysed, or at most she tried to tend the flowers. The roses
were blooming now, and on fine days, when the windows were open, the
aromatic perfume of the young carnations floated in with the sunbeams.
Angela did not notice the scent, and for all the pleasure the blossoms
gave her they might have been turnips and potatoes. But there was a
feeble underlying thought of duty in plucking off a small withered
leaf here and there, and in picking out the tiny weeds that tried to
grow round the flower-stems. From very far away she heard Madame
Bernard telling her, an age ago, that she could tend the flowers and
take care of the parrot by way of helping in the house.

Coco regarded her efforts with melancholy contempt, and turned his
back on her when she came near him, and even when she changed the
water in his tin cup. As he only drank three or four drops in a day,
it probably seem