Meantime Edgar stood, fatigued and weakened by the excitement of the day, by Jeanie’s bedside, with her cheek resting on his hand. It required all his muscular energy to support him in that strange task. He scarcely ventured to breathe for fear of disturbing her. When he made a little movement, her hands tightened upon his arm as she slept. The Doctor held wine to his lips, and encouraged him. “You are saving her life,” he said; and Edgar smiled and stood fast. He was saving her life--at this moment when his own strength was weakest, his own courage lowest; but it was not he who had endangered her life. The man who was to blame was entering Arden, full of elation and selfish joy, while Edgar stood by the humble bedside saving the life of the almost victim. What a strange contrast it was! But there are some men in the world whose lot it always is to be the ones who suffer and save--and their lot is not the worst in this life. The hours were long as they crept and crept onward to the morning. The Doctor dozed in his chair. Even the old mother slept by snatches in the midst of her watch--but Edgar, elevated by weariness, and weakness, and spent excitement, out of the ordinary regions of fleshly sensation, stood by Jeanie’s bedside, and did not sleep. He went over it all in his heart--he felt it was now finally settled somehow--everything confirmed and made certain, though he did not quite know how. He thought of all that had to be given up, with a faint, wan smile upon his lips. This time it was not an opiate, it was a numbness that hung over him, partly physical because of his attitude, but still more spiritual because of the exhaustion of his heart. All was over--he was a new being, coming painfully into a changed life through bitter pangs, of which he was but half-conscious. And Jeanie slept with her cheek on his hand, and the other living creatures in the cottage watched and slept, and breathed around him. And life and the great universe moved and swam about him, like scenes in a phantasmagoria--one scene dissolving into another, nothing steady or definite in earth or heaven. Sometimes, as if a stray light had caught it, one scene out of the past would suddenly shine out before him, generally something quite unconnected with his present position; and then a strange gleam would fall over the future, over that unknown waste which lay before. Thus the night stole on, till every minute seemed an hour, and every hour a day. CHAPTER XXI.