"Kate, my child, it is wrong for you to give up in this way. Your disease is more of the mind than of the body; and you have the power to arouse yourself and throw it off, if you will." "The power, mother! I, the power!" exclaimed Kate, in a voice that made her mother start. "Have you not?" inquired Mrs. Harrison calmly. "Has the bird, whose wing is broken, the power to fly?" asked Kate. "Unless you make an effort to throw off your present state of mind, you cannot live. And are you willing to die, and leave this dear child in the hands of those who cannot love it as you do?" "Has it not already been taken from me? Does it not draw its existence from another breast?" "But your health required--" "My health! mother! My very life depended upon the privilege you have all denied me. Do you want the proof? Look at that shadowy hand"--and she held up the thin white member against the light, which almost shone through it--"and at this shrunken face," and she laid her hand upon her colourless cheek. "Restore the fountain that has been dried, and let my babe drink at it, and there is some hope. None without." "That is impossible, Kate"-- "And just as impossible is my return to health through the means proposed." "But, for the sake of your friends, you ought to be willing to try the means of restoration prescribed by a physician in whom we all have confidence." "Friends?" said Kate, half to herself. "Friends? Have I any friends?" "My child, why do you speak in this way?" asked her mother, in a voice half sorrowful, half reproving. "_Friends_ seek your good, not their own pleasure," continued Kate. "Have I any who may be called by so excellent a name?" And she shook her head mournfully. "Have you not a husband?" said Mrs. Harrison. Kate again shook her head; and then, after a pause, replied-- "There is a man who calls himself my husband; but he is so only in name." "Kate! Kate!" exclaimed her mother, "are you mad? How dare you utter such language?" "A heart that is breaking, mother," said the unhappy creature, "may be pardoned, if, in a moment of intense suffering, it is betrayed into an expression of pain."