Gradually she found herself thinking of it all as if it had happened to some one else and not to her; as if she had seen it acted on the stage, or read it in a book; and then she seemed to have known it always. It was nothing new—the arbour, and the flowers, and the sunshine, the dark figure in the doorway, their mutual amazement, the mingled anguish and joy of their meeting, the agony of their farewell—all seemed to have been a part of her whole life; she had never been separate from it; she would evermore exist in the thought of it. Then the images became confused. She was no longer herself, but some one else, who, she could not decide. Ralph, still standing in the doorway, grew strangely like Geoffrey. Again a change—the whole was a dream. She was back at Altes, with Cissy and Ralph on the terrace, and Ralph was smiling on her lovingly while she recounted to him the terrible dream that had visited her. She was asleep! From very exhaustion, both mental and physical, from extremity of suffering, though compressed into the short space of a few hours, she was for the time laid to rest in the peaceful unconsciousness, which, though the waking therefrom may be bitter, is yet, at such times, an unspeakable mercy. I am not learned in medical matters, but I believe this sleep saved her from a brain fever or worse. Geoffrey came in from his visit to the stables, which had been prolonged beyond his intentions. Not finding his wife in the little sitting-room appropriated to their use, he came along the passage to seek her in her bedroom. He was not a light stepper, and his boots creaked loudly as he approached the room. But the sound did not disturb her, nor did his tap on the door. He repeated it, but with no effect. Then, imagining she must be in the garden, he opened the door, merely to glance in and satisfy himself as to her absence. The room was very dark, all the blinds drawn down, and a general air of sombreness and desertedness. No, there was her hat on the floor, and a glance at the bed revealed herself. In no very comfortable attitude, just as she had flung herself down, but fast asleep, breathing soft and regularly as an infant, and, as he looked more closely, with a sweet smile on her lips, though her face looked paler than its wont. “My poor darling,” murmured Geoffrey to himself, “she has been tired with her long morning alone. I must not leave her again for so long. She looks pale too. I trust she has not been ill.” And very gently he drew the bed-curtains so as to shade her still more from the light, closed the door with noiseless hand, and softly crept back along the passage to occupy himself as best he could without her, till she awoke. Already he had grown very dependent upon her. Indoors especially. He never felt quite in his element in the house, his life for many years past having literally been almost altogether spent in the open air.