Frau von Arnim shook her head. "I will come again at twelve," she said, with a faint smile. "Youth must have its sleep, and I shall be too anxious to be away long." The door closed softly, and Nora was left to her lonely vigil. She stood for a moment in the centre of the room, overcome by a sudden uneasiness and fear. She had watched before, but never before had the silence seemed so intense, the room so full of moving shadows. Except for the reflection from the log fire and the thin ray of a shaded night-light, the apartment was in darkness, but to Nora’s excited imagination the darkness was alive and only the outstretched figure beneath the canopy dead. The illusion was so strong that she crept closer, listening with beating heart. There was no sound. For one sickening moment it seemed as though her fear had become a reality—then a stifled sigh broke upon the stillness. Hildegarde stirred restlessly, and again there was silence, but no longer the same, no longer so oppressive. Death was as yet far off, and, relieved and comforted, Nora drew an arm-chair into the circle of firelight. From where she sat she could observe every movement of her charge without herself changing position, and for some time she watched anxiously, self-forgetful in the fulfilment of her duty. But then the fascination of the glowing logs drew her eyes away, and almost without her knowledge her thoughts slipped their leash and escaped from the gloomy room with its atmosphere of pain, out into the forest, back to the moment when life had broken out into full sunshine and happiness such as she had never known, and love incomparable, irresistible, swept down upon her and bore her with them into a new paradise. Who shall blame her if she saw in the bright flames not Hildegarde’s pale, suffering face, but the features of the man who had wrought in her the great miracle which occurs once, surely, in every woman’s life? Who shall blame her if a half-read letter and its writer were forgotten, or, if remembered, only with a tender pity such as all good women must feel for honest failure? And in that pity there was mingled a certain wonder at herself that she could ever have supposed her feeling for Robert Arnold to be love. What was the childish regret at parting, the casual affection for an old comrade, blown to a warmer glow by the first harsh winds of exile, compared to this—this wonderful Thing which in an instant had revealed to her the possibility of a union where the loneliness, conscious or unconscious, surrounding each individual life is bridged and the barriers between mind and mind, heart and heart, are burnt down by the flames of a pure and noble passion? Poor Arnold! It was well for him that he could not know what was passing in Nora’s mind nor see her face as she gazed into the fire. He might then have wished that his letter, with its bold self-confidence, had never been written. For the glow upon the young