Slowly the door opened, and Eleanor stood looking into his face. Her eyes, though bewildered, were calm and recognizing, while her whole expression seemed indicative of consciousness regained. The somnambulism and delirium, not unnatural to one in her condition, had left her very feeble in body but mentally aroused. As Vytal realized this, the demands of the moment became paramount to him, his own terrible lethargy being broken to meet her needs. “Mistress Dare,” he said, calmly, “I pray you rest here longer. I have sent for aid.” For a moment she made no response, but stood looking about her at the room’s interior. The torchlight fell across a sheet of paper on the table. First a single written sentence met her eye: “_Comparisons are odious._” She shivered and would have turned away, but there was more writing, which seemed to speak to her, though she was not sensible of reading the lines, even to herself: “_Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?_” She looked from the table out into the darkness, and then at Vytal. “Oh, sir, tell me how came I hither—thus—at night!” She clasped his cloak tightly about her, leaning against the door-post for support. “You have been stricken, madam, with a fever. I pray you rest.” At this a new apprehension came into her eyes. “Oh, John Vytal, have I spoken in feverish way? Tell me, tell me—” A quick denial sprang to his lips. He believed that deception then would have been no lie, but to the man who had ever fought for truth, to the simple, direct nature, even that deception was impossible. “You spoke, madam; yet, believe me, your words I shall withhold forever, even from myself.” Long they stood in silence, conveying no thought one to the other, by word, or look, or slightest gesture, their spirits, at the end of that silent lifetime, seeming to meet and become one; yet even in the instant of their acute conception of the union they stood apart, as if denying the bond. Finally he saw her tremble, and a keen realization of her own despair rose above all thoughts of self. “Thank God,” he said, “our colony hath need of us. There’s work to do—not for me only, but for you.” Thereafter she passed him, inclining her head in vague assent, and with a strenuous effort started out in the darkness toward the gate of the main enclosure. He could not follow, knowing that her silence prayed him to withhold assistance, yet every instinct fought against his self-control. “I will send the chirurgeon,” he said, “to your father’s house.” CHAPTER XI “Now will I show myself To have more of the serpent than the dove; That is—more knave than fool.” —MARLOWE, in _The Jew of Malta_.