But what is this white figure erecting itself from the pillow, sitting motionless and silent in the night? It is tears that keep these gentle eyelids apart--tears that banish from them the sleep of youth. Still, that she may not wake the sleeper by her side, scarcely daring to move her hand to wipe away this heavy dew which blinds her eyes. Menie Laurie, Menie Laurie, can this sad watcher be you? And Menie’s soul is vexing itself with plans and schemes, and Menie’s heart is rising up to God in broken snatches of prayer, constantly interrupted and merging into the bewilderment of her thoughts. Startled once for all out of the early calm, the serene untroubled youthful life which lies behind her in the past, Menie feels the change very hard and sore as she realises it;--from doing nought for her own comfort--from the loving sweet dependence upon others, to which her child’s heart has been accustomed--suddenly, without pause or preparation, to learn that all must depend upon herself,--to have the ghost of strife and discord, where such full harmony was wont to be,--to feel the two great loves of her nature--the loves which heretofore, in her own innocent and unsuspicious apprehension, have but strengthened and deepened each the other--set forth in antagonism, love against love, and her own heart the battle-ground. Shrinking and failing one moment, longing vainly to flee away--away anywhere into the utmost desolation, if only it were out of this conflict,--the next resolving, with such strong throbs and beatings of her heart, to take up her burden cordially, to be ever awake and alert, to subdue this giant difficulty with the force of her own strong love and ceaseless tenderness--praying now for escape, then for endurance, and anon breaking into silent tears over all. Alas for Menie Laurie in her unaccustomed solitude! and Menie thinks, like every other Menie, that she could have borne anything but this. But by-and-by, in spite of tears and trouble, the natural rest steals upon Menie--steals upon her unawares, though she feels, in the sadness of her heart, as if she could never rest again; throws back her drooping head upon her pillow, folds her arms meekly on her breast, closes her eyelids over the unshed tear; and thus it is that the dawn finds her out, like a flower overcharged and drooping with its weight of evening dew, but wrapt in sleep as deep and dreamless and unbroken as if her youth had never known a tear.