'Don't tell you, Henry? Why, there is nothing to tell,' said she. 'As I was walking along the sands, looking at the new tongue of land made by the landslip, I seem to have lost consciousness.' 'And you don't know what caused this?' 'Not in the least; unless it was my anxiety and want of sleep. This was the beginning of the long illness that I spoke of, and I seem to have remained quite without consciousness until a few weeks ago. I often try to make my mind bring back the circumstances under which I lost consciousness. I throw my thoughts, so to speak, upon a wall of darkness, and they come reeling back like waves that are dashed against a cliff.' 'Then don't do so any more, Winnie. I know enough of such matters to tell you confidently that you never will recall the incidents connected with your collapse, and that the endeavour to do so is really injurious to you. What interests me very much more is to know the circumstances under which you came to yourself. I am dying with impatience to know all about that.' II 'When I came to myself,' said Winifred, 'I was in a world as new and strange and wonderful as that in which Christopher Sly found himself when he woke up to his new life in Shakespeare's play.' She paused. She little thought how my flesh kindled with impatience. 'Yes, Winnie,' I said; 'you are going to tell me how, and where, and when you were restored to life--regained your consciousness, I mean--unless it will too deeply agitate you to tell me.' 'It would not agitate me in the least, Henry, to tell you all about it. But it is a long story, and this seems a strange place in which to tell it, surrounded by these glorious peaks and covered by this roof of sunrise. But do you tell me all about yourself, all about your illness, which seems to have been a dreadful one.' My story, indeed! What was there in my story that I could or dare tell her? My story would have to be all about herself, and the tragedy of the supposed curse, and the terrible seizures from which she had recovered, and of which she must never know. I set to work to persuade her to tell me all she knew. At last she yielded, and said, 'Well, I awoke as from a deep sleep, and found myself lying on a couch, with a man's face bending over mine. I could not help exclaiming, "Henry!'" 'Then did he resemble me?' I asked. 'Only in this--that in his eyes there was the expression which has always appealed to me more than any other expression, whether in human eyes or in the eyes of animals. I mean the pleading, yearning expression of loneliness that there was in your eyes when they were the eyes of a little, lame boy who could not get up the gangways without me.' 'Ah, the egotism of love!' I exclaimed. 'You mean, Winnie, that expression which my unlucky eyes had lost when we met upon the sands after our childhood was passed.'