Yet how could I resign myself? Without love, without sympathy, without communion with any, how could I meet the morning sun, and with it trace its oft repeated journey to the evening shades? Why did I continue to live⁠—why not throw off the weary weight of time, and with my own hand, let out the fluttering prisoner from my agonized breast?⁠—It was not cowardice that withheld me; for the true fortitude was to endure; and death had a soothing sound accompanying it, that would easily entice me to enter its demesne. But this I would not do. I had, from the moment I had reasoned on the subject, instituted myself the subject to fate, and the servant of necessity, the visible laws of the invisible God⁠—I believed that my obedience was the result of sound reasoning, pure feeling, and an exalted sense of the true excellence and nobility of my nature. Could I have seen in this empty earth, in the seasons and their change, the hand of a blind power only, most willingly would I have placed my head on the sod, and closed my eyes on its loveliness forever. But fate had administered life to me, when the plague had already seized on its prey⁠—she had dragged me by the hair from out the strangling waves⁠—By such miracles she had bought me for her own; I admitted her authority, and bowed to her decrees.