He has not time, however, to reach it before the handle of the door is slowly turned--before the door is as slowly opened, and---- "What is this?" For a second Dysart's heart seems to stop beating. He can only gaze spellbound at this figure, clad all in white, that walks deliberately into the room, and seemingly directly toward him. It is Joyce! Joyce! CHAPTER XXIX. "Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive." Is she dead or still living? Dysart, calmed now, indeed, gazes at her with a heart contracted. Great heaven! how like death she looks, and yet--he knows she is still in the flesh. How strangely her eyes gleam. A dull gleam and so passionless. Her brown hair--not altogether fallen down her back, but loosened from its hairpins, and hanging in a soft heavy knot behind her head--gives an additional pallor to her already too white face. The open eyes are looking straight before them, unseeing. Her step is slow, mechanical, unearthly. It is only indeed when she lays the candle she holds upon the edge of the table, the extreme edge, that he knows she is asleep, and walking in a dreamland that to waking mortals is inaccessible. Silently, and always with that methodical step, she moves toward the fireplace, and still a little further, until she stands on that eventful spot where he had given up all claim to her, and thrown her back upon herself. There is the very square on the carpet where she stood some hours ago. There she stands now. To her right is the chair on which she had leaned in great bitterness of spirit, trying to evoke help and strength from the dead oak. Now, in her dreams, as if remembering that past scene, she puts out her hands a little vaguely, a little blindly, and, the chair not being where in her vision she believes it to be, she gropes vaguely for it in a troubled fashion, the little trembling hands moving nervously from side to side. It is a very, sad sight, the sadder for, the mournful change that crosses the face of the sleeping girl. The lips take a melancholy curve: the long lashes droop over the sightless eyes, a long, sad sigh escapes her. Dysart, his heart beating wildly, makes a movement toward her. Whether the sound of his impetuous footstep disturbs her dream, or whether the coming of her fingers in sudden contact with the edge of the table does it, who can tell; she starts and wakens. At first she stands as if not understanding, and then, with a terrified expression in her now sentient eyes, looks hurriedly around her. Her eyes meet Dysart's. "Don't be frightened," begins he quickly. "How did I come here?" interrupts she, in a voice panic-stricken. "I was upstairs; I remember nothing. It was only a moment since that I----Was I asleep?" She gives a hasty furtive glance at the pretty loose white garment that enfolds her.