A dreamy
recollection of some past horror, it is true, pursued
her during her rapid and speechless flight; but any
analysis of the causes conducing to that horror, her
subjugated faculties were unable to enter upon. Even as
one who, under the influence of incipient slumber, rejects
the fantastic images that rise successively and indistinctly
to the slothful brain, until, at length, they weaken,
fade, and gradually die away, leaving nothing but a
formless and confused picture of the whole; so was it
with Miss de Haldimar. Had she been throughout alive to
the keen recollections associated with her flight, she
could not have stirred a foot in furtherance of her own
safety, even if she would. The mere instinct of
self-preservation would never have won one so truly
devoted to the generous purpose of her deliverer, had
not the temporary stupefaction of her mind prevented all
desire of opposition. It is true, in the moment of her
discovery of the sex of Oucanasta, she had been able to
exercise her reflecting powers; but they were only in
connection with the present, and wholly abstract and
separate from the past.
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