When a human being is abruptly plunged into an unnatural
unconsciousness by mental or physical catastrophes, the
greatest care is taken that the awakening to normal life again
be slow, gradual, without shock. Otherwise the return would
mean death or insanity or lifelong affliction with radical
weakness. It may be that this sea voyage with its four days
of agitations that lowered Susan's physical life to a harmony
of wretchedness with her mental plight, and the succeeding
days of gradual calming and restoration, acted upon her to
save her from disaster. There will be those readers of her
story who, judging her, perhaps, by themselves--as revealed in
their judgments, rather than in their professions--will think
it was quite unnecessary to awaken her gradually; they will
declare her a hard-hearted person, caring deeply about no one
but herself, or one of those curiosities of human nature that
are interested only in things, not at all in persons, even in
themselves. There may also be those who will see in her a
soft and gentle heart for which her intelligence finally
taught her to construct a shield--more or less
effective--against buffetings which would have destroyed or,
worse still, maimed her. These will feel that the sea voyage, the
sea change, suspending the normal human life, the life on land,
tided her over a crisis that otherwise must have been disastrous.
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