Dowie drew back and put her hand over her mouth. "Oh!" she said "Can she be--going--in her sleep?" But she was not going. Even Dowie's fright saw that in a few moments more. Was it possible that a mist of colour was stealing over the whiteness--or something near colour? Was the smile deepening and growing brighter? Was that caught breath something almost like a little sob of a laugh--a tiny ghost of a sound more like a laugh than any other sound on earth? Dowie slid down upon her knees and prayed devoutly--clutching at the robe of pity and holding hard--as women did in crowds nearly two thousand years ago. "Oh, Lord Jesus," she was breathing behind the hands which hid her face--"if she can dream what makes her smile like that, let her go on, Lord Jesus--let her go on." When she rose to her chair again and seated herself to watch it almost awed, it did not fade--the smile. It settled into a still radiance and stayed. And, fearful of the self-deception of longing as she was, Dowie could have sworn as the minutes passed that the mist of colour had been real and remained also and even made the whiteness a less deathly thing. And there was such a naturalness in the strange smiling that it radiated actual peace and rest and safety. When the clock struck three and there was no change and still the small face lay happy upon the pillow Dowie at last even felt that she dare steal into her own room and lie down for a short rest. She went very shortly thinking she would return in half an hour at most, but the moment she lay down, her tired eyelids dropped and she slept as she had not slept since her first night at Darreuch Castle. * * * * * When she wakened it was not with a start or sense of anxiety even though she found herself sitting up in the broad morning light. She wondered at her own sense of being rested and really not afraid. She told herself that it was all because of the smile she had left on Robin's face and remembered as her own eyes closed. She got up and stole to the partly opened door of the next room and looked in. All was quite still. Robin herself seemed very still but she was awake. She lay upon her pillow with a long curly plait trailing over one shoulder--and she was smiling as she had smiled in her sleep--softly--wonderfully. "I thank God for that," Dowie thought as she went in. The next moment her heart was in her throat. "Dowie," Robin said and she spoke as quietly as Dowie had ever heard her speak in all their life together, "Donal came." "Did he, my lamb?" said Dowie going to her quickly but trying to speak as naturally herself. "In a dream?" Robin slowly shook her head.