When she went back to bury the dream that I so suddenly drew out of the balmy land, I had only to shade the light, stir the fire a little, and then wait. From afar up the street came the stroke of one. Miss Axtell's face was turned away from me. I could only fancy that her eyes were closed. Once she put an arm over the pillow. I touched it. It burned with fever-heat. Then all was still. I sat upon a lounge, comfort-giving, related to the chair in style of covering. I fancied, after a long quiet, that my patient was asleep. I kept myself awake by examining this room that I was in. It was, like most of the other rooms, a hexagon, with two windows looking eastward. An air of homeness was over, and in, its every appointment. It seemed a room to sing in; _were_ songs ever heard there? I laid my head upon my hand, and listened to one that Fancy tried to sing,--I, who never sing, in whose soul music rolls and swells in great ocean-waves, that never in this world will break against the shore of sound; and so I builded one, very wild and porous and wavering, a style of iceberg shore, far out in the limitless, waters, and listened to the echoes that came,--and, listening, must have fallen into sleep. I awoke with a chill feeling, as if the fire had gone down. A draught seemed blowing upon me. I got up with a full sense of my position as keeper of that fire, and went to it. The door into the hall was open. I glanced at the bed; Miss Axtell was not there. The hall was dark. I caught up the lamp and hurried out. I leaned over the balustrade and looked down the stairway. Slowly going down I saw Miss Axtell. Was she a somnambulist? Perhaps so. I must be cautious. I hastened after her, moving as noiselessly as she. I took the precaution to leave the lamp in the upper hall. She was leaning against the wall-side of the staircase. Just as she reached the lower step, I put my arm around her. There was no need; she was fully awake. "Will you go back to sleep?" she asked of me, before I could find time to make the same request of her. "No,--I came here for you. Where are you going?" "In there"; and she pointed to the room where I had seen the doctor and Katie go,--where she who was dead lay. "Oh, come back! please do! that is no place for you"; and I endeavored to turn her steps. "It is well that you say it. She's in there; perhaps she isn't dead. Such things have been. It was sudden, you know. Let me go." I held her with all the strength I had. "Leave me to myself. I'm going to tell her,--to tell her _now_. She'll hear me better than to-morrow; they'll have a fathom of earth over her heart then: that will be deeper than all that love of Abraham which covered up her heart from me." What could I do? Despite my holding arms, she was gaining toward that fatal door, and the light was very dim. I called Katie three times, Miss Axtell still getting near to that I dreaded.