And so they find them half an hour later: he, like one crazed, with a face as ashen-white as her own, clasping a lifeless woman to his breast. CHAPTER XLII. Lifeless! Yes! But there are two kinds of lifelessness: one from which there is no back-coming--one from which there is. Esther's is the latter. Although a member of that fraternity whose province it is to kill and to make alive has sapiently said of her, "She will die!--she has not week to live!" Mother Nature has made answer, "She shall _not_ die; I will save her alive! She has yet many years." And Esther lives. For many days, it is hard to predicate of her whether she be dead or alive; so faintly does the wave of life heave to and fro in her breast--so lowly does life's candle burn. But though the candle burn low, it is not blown out. By-and-bye strength gathers itself again, and comes back to pulse and vein and limb. At seventeen life holds us so fast in his embrace that he will hardly let us go. To the sick child there come sweet sleeps; there comes a desire for food--a pleasure in the dusty sunbeam streaming through the window--in the mote playing up and down on ceiling and wall. I marvel will the bliss of spirits at the Resurrection dawn, feeling the clothing of pure new bodies, surpass the delight that attends the renewal of the old body at the uprising from a great sickness? The blanket that hung between Esther and all objects of sensation is withdrawn: full consciousness returns, and remembrance; and in their company, untold shame--shame at not having died! The celandine's greenish buds are unclosing into little brazen wide-awake flowers in the hedge-banks: the crocuses in the garden-borders hold up their gold chalices to catch the gentle February rain and the mild February sunbeams; in the wood-hollows the mercury--spring's earliest herald--flourishes, thick and frequent, its stout green shoots. About the meadows, small gawky lambs make a feeble "ba-a-a-ing." It is drawing towards sundown. The window is open; and near it, on a beech bough, a thrush sits, singing a loud sweet even-song.