"But, good heavens, why not?" "I wanted to go to you!" "And why did you not do it, then?" Again he sat lost in thought; his brain seemed clouded. "Ah yes! I think I remember all about it now," he said slowly. "I wanted to go--and then Bertie said--" "What did Bertie say?" "That he thought me a fool for my pains; a coward, and a cur, and a fool." "But why?" "Because you had disbelieved my word." "And then?" "I thought perhaps he was right and I did not go." She flung herself on a sofa in utter woe, weeping passionately. "Then it was what Bertie, said?" she cried reproachfully. "Yes; nothing else," he said, mournfully. "God in heaven! that alone." They were both silent. Then Eva sat upright again, shivering; her face was white and bloodless, her eyes fixed with a dull, vacant glare, like weathered glass. "Oh Frank!" she cried--"Frank, I am so frightened! It is coming!" "What, what?" he asked in alarm. "I feel it coming upon me!" she moaned, panting. "It is like the sound of distant thunder, droning in my ears and in my brain. Great heavens! It is close to me! Frank, oh Frank! It is above me, over me. The thunder is over my head!" She shrieked and fought the air with her arms as if to beat something off, and her slender frame was convulsed as from a series of mysterious electric shocks. Her breath came rattling in her throat. Then she tottered, and he thought she would have fallen. He clasped her in his arms. "Eva, Eva!" he cried. She allowed him to drag her to the sofa without making any resistance, happy in his embrace in spite of her hallucination; and there she remained sitting by him, with his arm round her, cowering against his breast. "Eva! come, Eva, what is it that ails you?" "It has passed over," she murmured, almost inaudibly. "Yes, it is gone now--it is gone. It has come over me so often lately; it comes roaring on, slowly and stealthily, and then it breaks over my head, shaking me to the core; and then it goes away, dies away--away.... I am in such terror of it; it is like a monster which comes bellowing at me, and it frightens me so! What can it be?" "I cannot tell; over-wrought nerves, perhaps," he said, consolingly. "Oh! hold me close," she said, caressingly; "hold me tightly to you. When I am alone, after it is past, I am left in such deadly fear; but now--now I have you--you once more. You will not cast me from you again; you will protect me, your poor little Eva, will you not? Ah! yes, I have you back now. I knew, I felt, I should have you back some day; and I have made papa come to Scheveningen every summer. I had an idea that you must be somewhere in Holland--at the Hague or at Scheveningen; and that if we were ever to meet again it would be here. And now it has happened, and I have you once more. Hold me tightly now--in both arms--both arms. Then I shall not be frightened." She clung more closely to his breast, her head on his shoulder; and then, in a voice like a child's: