Then there was a pause; and Dora, still on her knees by the side of the bed, met as best she could the light which dazzled her, which enveloped her in a kind of pale flame, from the eyes preternaturally bright that were fixed upon her face, and listened, as to a kind of strange lullaby, to the broken words of fondness, a murmur of fond names, of half sentences, and monosyllables, in the silence of the hushed room. This seemed to last for a long time. She was conscious of people passing with hushed steps behind her, looking over her head, a man’s low voice, the whisper of the nurses, a movement of the lights; but always that transfigured face, all made of whiteness, luminous, the hot breath coming and going, the hands about her face, the murmur of words. The girl was cramped with her attitude for a time, and then the cramp went away, and her body became numb, keeping its position like a mechanical thing, while her mind too was lulled into a curious sense of torpor, yet spectatorship. This lasted she did not know how long. She ceased to be aware of what was being said to her. Her own name, “Dora,” over and over again repeated, and strange words, that came back to her afterwards, went on in a faltering stream. Hours might have passed for anything she knew, when at last she was raised, scarcely capable of feeling anything, and put into a chair by the bedside. She became dimly conscious that the brilliant eyes that had been gazing at her so long were being veiled as with sleep, but they opened again suddenly as she was removed, and were fixed upon her with an anguish of entreaty. “Dora, my child,--my child! Don’t take her away!” “She is going to sit by you here,” said a voice, which could only be a doctor’s voice, “here by your bedside. It is easier for her. She is not going away.”