The door slammed, and then all was quiet, both men sitting spellbound, for a single glance had told them that she was walking in her sleep. Her eyes were open, but evidently unseeing, with that vaguely transcendental look of the somnambulist; and she was clad only in a white simar of silk. Her russet hair, with which the wind had rioted, hung in profuse disorder about her shoulders and beneath her throat, where now it rose and fell more gently with the undulation of her breast. Her hands, clasped before her, added an effect of rest to the blind bewilderment of her all-unconscious pose. For a moment she stood mutely facing them and looking, as it were, through them to a limitless beyond. Vytal rose. “Mistress Dare, I pray you—” but as the name Dare seemed to be borne in upon her mind she cried out terrifiedly, and, swaying, would have fallen, had he not supported her and led her to his pallet of straw. As his hand touched hers, Vytal started. “She hath a fever,” he said to Marlowe. “Do you seek the chirurgeon. He sleeps on the _Admiral_ to-night—also her tire-woman, Margery Harvie, at the governor’s house.” Hastily Marlowe started out, and the two were left alone. In silence, Vytal covered Eleanor with his cloak, then, kneeling beside her with all of a man’s tender concern and helplessness, held her hand. Her mind was wandering now, and she spoke brokenly. The torchlight revealed her expression to him, and every look betokened change of subject in her thoughts, or, rather, change of subconscious impression, for the words never forsook a central theme, around which her mind seemed to revolve in desperate fascination. Occasionally a glimmer of the distant lightning fell across the listener’s face, showing it tense and deep-cut with the lines of a new resignation. “Oh, I am but a child,” he heard her say, as her speech grew more coherent. “I pray thee, father, take me not to London … ’twill ne’er be the same to me as this … these vagrant flowers … they grow not thus in the streets of towns.” Her voice was tremulous with tears. “Is’t true, father, that the queen … hath sent for thee … oh, then, thou’lt go … I prove no hinderance … thou’lt go, and I’ll play at happiness in London.… ’Tis best.” She paused and tossed feverishly on the narrow pallet; but at length, as Vytal’s firm grasp seemed to comfort her, she lay quite still and spoke again. Several years had apparently elapsed in the life she was re-living. “Alack, I knew we’d find no content in London.… What is’t worries thee so, my father?” Suddenly a second cry escaped her. “What sayest thou? Her Majesty would have me married! … and ’tis the only way … nay, nay.… Will she not spare thee, father? Thou hast done naught amiss.… ’Tis most unjust.… Ah, nay, in troth, I cannot … yet ’tis all for thee … for thee … then tell her Majesty I will.”