in vain,—­till every effort of her mind, every thought of her daily life, was pervaded by a conviction that as she grew older from year to year, the struggle should be more intense.  The swimmer when first he finds himself in the water, conscious of his skill and confident in his strength, can make his way through the water with the full command of all his powers.  But when he begins to feel that the shore is receding from him, that his strength is going, that the footing for which he pants is still far beneath his feet,—­ that there is peril where before he had contemplated no danger,—­then he begins to beat the water with strokes rapid but impotent, and to waste in anxious gaspings the breath on which his very life must depend.  So it...