Sometimes the indignity of returning to the habits of childhood struck deep into her soul; occasionally she indulged in a rare petulance, but generally she accepted philosophically the restrictions of her narrow life. "You understand what I want you to do, don't you?" she asked Miss Dorset on the way up to her room. "Open the safe, and get out all the leather cases, and take down my jewel case from my bedroom and put everything ready for me in the library." "Very well, I'll see to that," answered Miss Dorset; and with the anticipation of a pleasant task to be performed when she awoke, Mrs. Greene fell asleep. III When the time came to waken Mrs. Greene lest a prolonged sleep should spoil her night's rest, Miss Dorset experienced a tremor of the heart looking at the old face on the pillow. She perceived more clearly than anyone the ravages wrought by the three years since Geoffrey Greene's death in the body that encased Margaret Greene's ardent but flickering vitality. Sometimes it was impossible to believe that Mrs. Greene was only sleeping; her face seemed too old, too small, too hollow of cheek and temple, ever to waken to a semblance of life. These stiff brittle-looking eyelids could surely never lift again, the body outstretched under the eiderdown in a rigid and comfortless abandon could never reassemble itself into the familiar contours of trunk and limbs. Miss Dorset endured a moment's prevision of the inevitable day when she would touch a hand and find it cold; every day she flinched at the thought, but every day she marshalled her resources and bent down to Mrs. Greene with the invariable remark: "I think perhaps you would like to waken now, and get up." Mrs. Greene wakened slowly and with difficulty. Her first consciousness was of the past. She wakened in the period of her early marriage when her children were young--often with their names on her lips--and she would look vacantly at Miss Dorset for a few moments while her brain went roaming down the long years past the familiar landmarks of marriages, births and deaths, till it fetched up at last with a consciousness of her present situation, recognition of Miss Dorset, and with a final detailed knowledge of the month, the day, and her immediate plans. Even so, for a little while her conversation was disjointed; she referred to her grandchildren by her children's names, and it seemed a cruelty to expect her to re-assume the burden of rational thought. To-day the struggle was not so prolonged as usual. "Yes, I would like to get up now," she said, still lying motionless but collecting her forces for the effort. "Edith will be here soon and I mustn't be late for tea." "It's Mrs. Hugh who is coming, not Mrs. Rodney," Miss Dorset corrected gently. "Yes, yes, I know it is; that's what I said," replied Mrs. Greene testily. "Get me up now. I'll put on my good blue dress and the shawl Lavinia gave me."