Nouna heaved a long sigh, and looked timidly down through her husband’s arm. “No, it’s--gone,” she whispered. “What is gone, dear? Tell me what you saw,” said George caressingly, as he drew her back into the little sitting-room, where a lamp now shed its soft light over the white table-cloth, and Madame Barbier, who adored the picturesque young English couple, was arranging the supper in a dainty and appetising fashion. Nouna rubbed her eyes, and clinging to her husband’s arm, let the words of her recital drop from her lips in a slow, hesitating and faltering manner, as if she were fast asleep, and her brain were working sluggishly under the half-paralysing influence of a will stronger than her own. “I was sitting in here,” she said, “and thinking of all the happiness we have had to-day--the soft air and the warm sun, and your kind eyes upon me, and all the lovely things we saw--the beautiful ladies and the shining water, and the lights among the trees in the Champ Elysées when we came back. And all at once,” her hands tightened their hold upon his sleeve, “I felt that I must get up and go out--there upon the balcony; and I looked out at the sky right in front where it was yellow like flame, and all the pretty pictures of the day I saw quite plainly still in my mind. But then--I don’t know how--I felt my eyes drawn down from the bright sky, and there down below me--to the left, I saw all black gloom, and in it I seemed to see Rahas’ room in Mary Street, with all the pretty toys and bright shawls about just as he used to put them for me to look at. And in the middle Rahas himself, only not kind and gentle as he used to be, but with a wicked cruel face, and burning eyes that frightened me. And I felt afraid, as if I could have screamed. It seemed so strange, for even when he used to look fierce, as he did sometimes, I never minded, and I was never frightened. Was it a dream, George, that I saw? And if it was only a dream, why was I afraid?”