Queenie was asleep at last, and when Margery came again to the door of the room and saw the closed eyes and the parted lips, from which the breath came easily and regularly, she exclaimed: “Thank God, she sleeps at last. You have saved her life—or, at least, her reason; but let me help you lay her down. She is too heavy for you to hold, and you are not strong.” “No, no,” Mrs. La Rue answered, almost fiercely. “No, no, I will not give her up, now that I have her in my arms. I am not tired. I do not feel her weight any more than I did when she was a baby, and if I did, think you I would not do it all the same—I who have so longed to hold her as I do now. Go away, Margie, and leave us alone again.” So Margery went away a second time, and busied herself below with some work she had been persuaded to take, and which was a part of Anna’s bridal trousseau, for that young lady had insisted upon her making the traveling dress, which was all there was now to finish of the elaborate and expensive wardrobe for which, it was said, the major’s money paid. And while Margery worked in the sitting-room below, Mrs. La Rue sat in the chamber above, holding the sleeping girl, until her limbs were cramped, and numb—and ached with intolerable pain, while rings of fire danced before her eyes, and in her ears there was a humming sound, and a fullness in her head, as if all the blood of her body had centered there. And still she did not move, lest she should awaken the sleeper, but sat as motionless as a figure carved from stone, sometimes shutting her tired eyes, and again fixing them with a steady gaze upon the upturned face resting on her arm. Two hours had gone by, and Mrs. La Rue was beginning to feel that her strength was failing her, when Queenie at last awoke, and said, very sweetly and kindly: “I have been asleep, I am sure, and I feel so much better. How good in you, Christine, to hold me so long. It must have tired you very much. Thank you, dear old Christine!” And taking the pallid face between both her hands, Queenie kissed it lovingly, thereby paying the tired woman for her two hours’ endurance. Queenie was much better after that long sleep. The spell which bound her so relentlessly was broken, and she improved steadily both in health and spirits, but would let neither Mrs. La Rue nor Margery leave her. “I shall sink right back again into that dreadful nervousness if you go away,” she said. “I need you both to keep me up—Margery to cheer me by day, and Christine to soothe me to sleep at night, when the world is the blackest, and Phil’s dead face seems so close to mine that I can almost feel its icy touch, and can hear his bitter cry for me. Only Christine’s song can drown that cry, which, I think, will haunt me forever.”