Out of the black darkness a face slowly defined itself, bending over the pillow and creeping close to his own--only a face--he could not distinguish even the outline of a figure. He knew it very well, and the eyes, too--but there was an upbraiding there that, while she lived, he had never seen in those of gentle Emily Carlyle; and a reproach came from the white lips, though they did not move to give it passage. "All forgotten! I--the promise, too. And yet--I suffer--I suffer always." The sad, pleading expression of the face and eyes vanished then; and a strange, pale glare, not like the moonlight, that seemed to come from within, lighted them up--fixed and rigid, yet eloquent, of unutterable agony: there was written plainly the self-abhorrence of a heart conscious of the coils of the undying worm--the despair of a soul looking far into Futurity, yet seeing no end to the wrath to come. Then the darkness swallowed up all; and, before Keene thoroughly roused himself--with a smothered cry--he knew that he was alone again. A cold dew lingered on the dreamer's forehead, as if a breath from beyond the grave had lately passed over it; but terror was not the predominating feeling. He had ruled that timid, trusting girl too long and too imperiously to quail before her disembodied spirit. But a strange sadness overcame him as he pondered upon all that she had endured--and might still be enduring--for his sake: a glimmer of something like generosity and compassion flickered for a brief space over the surface of the cast-steel heart. He rose, and leaned out into the steady, outer moonlight, musing for several minutes, and then began muttering aloud. "It would be as well to clear off one debt at least. I did pass my word. She deserves this sacrifice, if it were only for never complaining: let her have her way. By G--d, I'll go off to-morrow evening, and I'll tell Cecil so as soon as I can see her. Bah! what is a man worth if he can not forget? Besides, I don't know--" The rest of his doubts and scruples he confessed--not even to the stars.