A new experience had come to Mrs. Wylder. Her passion over the death of her son; her constant and prolonged contention with her husband; her protest against him whom she called the Almighty; the public consequence of the same; these, and the reaction from all these, had resulted in a sudden sinking of the vital forces, so that she who had been like a burning fiery furnace, was now like a heap of cooling ashes on a hearth, with the daylight coming in. She had not only never known what illness was, she did not even know what it was to feel unfit. Her consciousness of health was so clear, so unmixed, so unencountered, that she had never had a conception, a thought, a notion of what even that health was. Power and strength had so constantly seemed part of her known self, that she never thought of them: they were never far enough from her to be seen by her; she did not suspect them as other than herself, or dream that they could be disjoined from her. She could think only in the person of a strong woman; she was aware only of the being of a strong woman. Even after she had been some time helpless in bed, as often as she thought of anything she would like to do, it was the act of trying to get up and do it that made her aware afresh that she was no more the woman corresponding to her consciousness of herself. For her consciousness had never yet presented her as she really was, but always through the conditional and non-essential, so that by accidents only was she characterized to herself. Now she was too feeble even to care for the loss of her strength; her weakness went too deep to be felt as an oppression, for it met with no antagonism. Her inability to move was now no prison, and her attendant was no slave with tardy feet, but an angel of God.