attempt was left untried — all in vain. Dread takes hold of Layla's heart, perplexity of Farid's soul, and sorrow of his imagination — he who was so enthralled by the charms of his Layla.
Distress and fear of the future flood Layla's soul; she weakens, and soon becomes like a child before Farid, obeying him spontaneously and timidly; her will melts away before everyone, and a kind of perpetual daze possesses her. Farid hastens to restore confidence to her soul; his loving heart and his generous youth move him to pledge to Layla that he will not forsake her however grave her condition becomes, and that after their marriage he will take her to the capitals of Europe, in the hope that there they may find someone able to cure her.
And so still other months pass over Layla, between hope and despair, between fortitude and revolt. Sometimes she goes out to stroll, even into the city; and sometimes she shuts herself in her room for days, refusing to see anyone or to be seen by anyone — not even Farid; indeed, Farid above all.
Melancholy got the better of her. She wakes one morning with residues of pain and despondency stirring restlessly in her being, spreading through it a sad calm — the calm of despair, of surrender to a reality which everything shows no power will be strong enough to turn back. She stood before the mirror, scrutinizing her face, imagining the dark destiny that awaits her in a life in which she is a frightening specter.. She let herself drift on in her musings, on this dark destiny written for her, on this fate that sometimes pounces upon people and makes them wretched and miserable; and life appeared to her like a dense procession of driven creatures marching in a monotonous pattern of beginnings and endings. She went on looking at her own image without seeing it, seized by a transport that carried her fancy soaring above that dense procession of creatures
— creatures who have wills and intentions, but who, however wide their circle grows, remain in that serried rank pressing on toward the destiny decreed for it. She shook her head, smiling a bitter smile, and threw herself on her bed, mocking at pains that so possess a being like herself that all existence shrinks to the compass of her own self, while she is no more than an atom in existence, in this vast sea of creatures... And she passed days of quiet, still indifference.
But how is a human being to free himself entirely from the bonds that tie him to himself, to his own being, to this feeling that the
universe, with all that is in it and all who are in it, is but the frame in which he himself dwells... above all when he stands at the dawn of his youth and it has not been given him to have a mission. So she came back to herself, to her own reality, and her pains returned to her; and here she is, taking from the table beside her bed a photograph taken of her before this malignant disease, in which she appeared in all her attractiveness and charm, and rushing to the mirror to scrutinize it — and this frightening creature she has become.
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The dessert that mothers prefer
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Try it with fruit
Royal Gelatin Dessert
7 LUSCIOUS FLAVORS
Royal Gelatin
The dessert no home should be without
It has the taste of delicious fruits