It had been arranged that for the two nights before the funeral Agnes was to sleep in the front bedroom, on one side of Cousin Hetty's room, and Marise in the small hall bedroom on the other side, the same room and the same bed in which she had slept as a little girl. Nothing had been changed there, since those days. The same heavy white pitcher and basin stood in the old wash-stand with the sunken top and hinged cover; the same oval white soap-dish, the same ornamental spatter-work frame in dark walnut hung over the narrow walnut bedstead. As she undressed in the space between the bed and the wash-stand, the past came up before her in a sudden splashing wave of recollection which for a moment engulfed her. It had all been a dream, all that had happened since then, and she was again eight years old, with nothing in the world but bad dreams to fear, and Cousin Hetty there at hand as a refuge even against bad dreams. How many times she had wakened, terrified, her heart beating hammer-strokes against her ribs, and trotted shivering, in her night-gown, into Cousin Hetty's room. "Cousin Hetty! Cousin Hetty!" "What? What's that? Oh, you, Marise. What's the matter? Notions again?" "Oh, Cousin Hetty, it was an _awful_ dream this time. Can't I get into bed with you?" "Why yes, come along, you silly child." The fumbling approach to the bed, the sheets held open, the kind old hand outstretched, and then the haven . . . her head on the same pillow with that of the brave old woman who was afraid of nothing, who drew her up close and safe and with comforting assurance instantly fell asleep again. And then the delicious, slow fading of the terrors before the obliterating hand of sleep, the delicious slow sinking into forgetfulness of everything. * * * * * Standing there, clad in the splendor of her physical maturity, Marise shivered uncontrollably again, and quaked and feared. It was all a bad dream, all of it, and now as then Cousin Hetty lay safe and quiet, wrapped in sleep which was the only escape. Marise turned sick with longing to go again, now, to seek out Cousin Hetty and to lie down by her to share that safe and cold and dreamless quiet. She flung back over her shoulder the long shining dark braid which her fingers had been automatically twisting, and stood for a moment motionless. She was suffering acutely, but the pain came from a source so deep, so confused, so inarticulate, that she could not name it, could not bring to bear on it any of the resources of her intelligence and will. She could only bend under it as under a crushing burden, and suffer as an animal endures pain, dumbly, stupidly. After a time a small knock sounded, and Agnes's voice asked through the door if Miss Marise thought the door to . . . to . . . if the "other" door ought to be open or shut. It was shut now. What did people do as a general thing?