Then black darkness again--a darkness through which figures flitted here and there; and men came, and talked to him, and left him; men who laughed, or men who drank, or men who clapped him on the shoulder, and strove to advise him. And then all the figures merging impossibly, as it seemed, into the one figure of Moira. Moira flitting about his rooms, softly putting things straight; Moira, with grave eyes, looking into his, and with lips that smiled. And for a time that dream did not fade. Curiously, too, it seemed good and restful to have her there; broken thing though he was, he yet was able to realise that. Not that he could tell exactly from whence she came, or where she went when each day was ended; sufficient for him then that she was there; that he heard her voice speaking to him; that he could watch her moving about the room. And gradually, as he came to realise what he was, and what he had been, and how low he had fallen, a great shame came upon him that she should see him like this. And it was part of the dream--almost the waking part of it--that he should strive to tell her so; and that she, with a cry, should take him for the first time in her arms, and hide his face upon her breast and soothe him as she might have soothed a child. And from that dream he woke to find her gone. But she came again--and it was to find a Jimmy changed, by some curious process, in her absence. Some of the bitterness remained; but here was a man who looked out with eyes that had some eagerness in them in search for the better things he had left behind so long. Presently, on an impulse, he began to talk to her about that long neglected work; began to discuss, half to himself and half to her, some point in it that had baffled him. Found himself presently, indeed, talking eagerly about it, while she sat on the opposite side of the fireplace with her chin propped in her hands, and with her eyes upon his, listening--suggesting! From that it was but a step to his desk--with a flying pen for music to her ears. She had sent him there; she saw the old eager light in the tired eyes and in the worn face; she answered quickly when he spoke, or when he read a phrase to her. She sat there--eager, alert, and ready--while the night wore itself away, and while he wrote. And in her heart a song to match the flying pen. The long night was ended, and the blessed dawn had come. When presently the pen ceased, while his lamp died out beside him, and his head lay upon his work where he slept, she stole softly from the room, and went away. For she knew that she had won. CHAPTER V "IF I MIGHT DIE!" She was gone, but the spirit of her remained. Never again could he shame himself as he had done before; always it seemed that her presence was in the room; if his pen dropped from his hand, it was only that it might be caught up again at the remembrance of her eager face when she had urged him to work.