“I am glad to meet you, for Robert loves you very dearly, and came near putting off the wedding until your home-coming.” “I am very sorry to have missed it. Have I come too late to offer congratulations?” “No, indeed, every sunset but closes another wedding day with us,” and she kissed the flushed face of the sleeper she so loved. Too blind was that love to reveal the plight in which this accident had left him. Call it accident this once, to give it tone. Cherokee willingly accepted for truth the statement that Marrion had made. Enough for her woman heart to know that her husband needed her attention and love. There over him she leaned, her hair rippling capewise over her gown, while from the ruffled edge her feet peeped, pink and bare. She was wrapped in a long robe of blue cashmere, with a swansdown collar, which she clasped over her breast with her left hand. It was easy to be seen there was little clothing under this gown, which every now and then showed plainly, in spite of the care she took to hide it. Art was powerless to give these fine and slight undulations of the body that shone, so to speak, through the soft and yielding material of her garment. Marrion studied the poem she revealed; he saw she had a wealth of charms--every line of her willowy figure being instinct with grace and attractiveness, as was the curve of her cheeks and the line of her lips. Imagine a flower just bursting from the bud and spreading ’round the odor of spring, and you may form some faint idea of the effect she produced. To Marrion she was not a woman, she was _the_ woman--the type, the abstraction, the eternal enigma--which has caused, and will forever cause, to doubt, hesitate and tremble, all the intelligence, the philosophy, and religion of humanity. All his soul was in his eyes; Eve, Pandora, Cleopatra, Phyrne, passed before his imagination and said: “Do you understand, now?” and he answered: “Yes, I understand.”--Robert was safe at home and was now sleeping quietly, so Marrion thought he had done his duty. “I shall leave you now, Mrs. Milburn; he will be all right when he has had his sleep out.” “Oh, do not leave us, what shall I do without you?” she pleaded in child-fashion. “If it will serve you in the least, I shall be glad to remain,” he assured her, as he resumed his seat. After all, he did not know but that it was best for him to stay. Too well he knew that to every sleep like this there is an awakening that needs a moderator.