She slept on the ground-floor, and a garden-walk passed under her window. A figure now darkened it. It could hardly be said that she was frightened, she seemed to have turned to stone. Some one tapped, then stood peering in and making signs. As she did not stir, the tapping was repeated, urgent and more urgent. She arose and with less astonishment than seemed explicable, recognized Judith Bray, who whispered gaspingly, "Let me in, let me in--you must!" At this point was entered by Celia a quite different phase of sensation. Now that there seemed to be something to do, a call upon her for she as yet did not know what, her nerve got back its tensest steadiness, her mind its calm,--she was the effective daughter of a long line of effective people. She had signed the auroral intruder to a side-entrance, the furthest from the sleepers in the house, and when they had tiptoed back to her own chamber and noiselessly closed its door, she re-entered her bed, being conscious in an undercurrent fashion of cold. As her eyes consulted Judith, the livid atmosphere in which her bad dreams had been enacting themselves through the night was shot with sanguine. Judith's face prepared the mind for revelations which should smother. That touch of excess which, however expressed, had always been an element in the repugnance with which she inspired Celia, showed itself now in a haggardness beyond all one could conceive a person achieving in the brief space since the girl had been seen at the gate of her garden jesting with the passers. She was bareheaded; the wide hood of a travelling-cape, which had perhaps replaced her hat, lay back, and her blown hair made a great wreath to her bloodless face. Her breathing spoke of a merciless excitement driving her heart. Celia sat up and clasped her knees with cramped fingers, pale with the gray pallor of the dawn, in which her long coppery hair was just beginning to glimmer a little--with the gilt picture-frames, and the griffins of the candlesticks, and the like. "Well?" she said. "Oh, I don't know how to tell you!" broke forth Judith, and the manner of this first utterance exposed shockingly the fact that here stood that sickening anomaly, a Judith clean emptied of spirit, pride, or courage: "How shall I tell you?" "Hush!... Speak lower!" "Oh, who cares?... I have brought him back to you----" "You have brought back whom?" Celia inquired in blank wonder, "You have brought back--No, no, you don't mean--What? You never can mean _Larry_?" "I do.... For pity's sake _wait_ till I've told you...." "Then it was _you_ who took him away?..." "Yes, it was.... And now I've got him dead on my hands!" Celia's understanding could not at once fully grasp this which was offered, and she remained open-mouthed and mute.