She speculated languidly upon her sensations. They recalled a day at the dentist's, years before. A tube had been placed over her mouth and she had struggled, remembering a hideous story of a woman--a French marquise--that she had read in a magazine. The name began with a "B" or a "V." "Brin--" something. The Funnel--_The Leather Funnel_--that was the name of the story.... But there came no choking water--only sweet, buzzing air.... And then her body had dropped away from her, as it was doing now.... She recalled the sensation of rest and freedom; she had passed, like a bird planing down warm breezes, into exquisite oblivion.... She had returned, centuries later, to a dull aching pain, harsh noises, and lights that were like blows.... But if she had not returned? She would have been dead.... They would have buried her.... Such things had happened.... So that was death--that cradling, beautiful sleep. And God was sending it to her now; flooding her, drowning her in its warm comfort.... God was very good.... She was sorry--sorry that she had often not believed in Him.... But Miss Hartill didn't.... But she would never see Miss Hartill any more.... Perhaps, years after, when she was tired of sleeping, she would go back and see her again.... There was All Souls' Night, when you woke up.... But she would not frighten Miss Hartill.... She laughed a little, to think that she could ever frighten Miss Hartill.... She would just kiss her, a little ghost's kiss that would feel like a puff of air ... and then she would go back and sleep and sleep and sleep ... with only the yew-berries pattering on to her gravestone to tell her when another year had drifted past.... It was funny that people could be afraid to die.... She wondered if ghosts snored, and if you heard them, if your grave were very close? It was her last thought as she slid into slumber. Instantly the breakfast gong came crashing across her peace. She fought against waking. Her eyelids lifted the weight upon them as violets press upwards against a clod of rotten leaves. She lay dazedly, her mind cobwebbed with dreams, her thoughts trickling back into the channels of the previous night. Slowly she took in her situation. There was the window, and a shining day without: she could hear the starlings quarrelling on the lawn, and the squeak of an angry robin.... There was her room, and the tidy pile of clothes by the bed ... the bed, and she herself lying in it.... So she was not dead! There was to-day to be faced, and Miss Hartill's anger, and all the other hundreds and thousands of days.... And she must get up at once. Her sick mind shrank from that, as from a culminating terror. She was desperately tired; her body ached as if it had been beaten. Dressing was a monstrous and impossible feat.... It could not be.... Yet her step-mother would come--she was between God and Mrs. Denny--and God had left her in the lurch. She lay shielding her eyes from the strong light.