She turned quickly at a sound behind her, and saw that her husband had buried his face in the cushions of the chair, and was trembling violently. She went to him, but there was no comfort to give nor to receive. Death alone could bring release for him and for her. She could only surround him with her arms while he sobbed with the terrible hysterical sobbing of a man utterly broken down, and let him feel that he was not alone and unpitied. “I don’t know what ails me,” he said at length, trying to control himself. “Don’t mind me, Annette. My nerves seem to be all unstrung. It must be that fever.” “Oh! don’t, Lawrence; please don’t!” she said faintly. He became silent all at once, and it seemed as though a chill had passed over him. She sighed drearily, and smoothed his hair with her hand. “Trust your wife,” she said. “I am by you always.” “You are not afraid of me?” He seemed to ask the question with a kind of terror. “My poor Lawrence! no. I do not fear you as much as you do me. Don’t have such fancies.” She did not explain in what confessional she had learned his secret; in what troubled sleep wherein the unwary tongue speaks; in what more troubled waking, when the eyes and actions speak; or in what sudden suspicion and enlightenment, coming she knew not whence. She told nothing, and he asked nothing, only leaned on her bosom, and wept again as though all his manhood had departed. “O Annette!” he said, “I dreamed last night that I was a little boy, and that I stood by my mother while she brushed my hair into curls round her finger. I thought I had been away a long distance, and come back again, and I stood quite still, and remembered another childhood before I took that journey. I was so glad to be back—as glad as I should be now if I could go back. Some way I could see that my hair was golden, and that my mother smiled as she brushed it, though I did not look at her. Such dreams are always coming to me now. As soon as I go to sleep, I am a child that has been away and is solemnly glad to be back again. And then I wake, and am in hell!” She went on smoothing his hair steadily. “Some time soon the dream will come true,” she said. “Do the best you can. Do justice to the wronged. Come away with me, and we will hide ourselves somewhere in the world, and try to find peace for the days that are left. And by‐and‐by, Lawrence, will come the day when we shall both be as little children again, and all our terrible burdens will slip off. You must do justice to the wronged.” “In some way, yes!” he said. “I have tried to think. He must be saved. But I cannot go away. Do you remember ever having been afraid to go up‐stairs in the dark, of having felt sure that there was some one behind just ready to grasp you, till you screamed out in terror? It would be like that with me. If once I turn my back on this place, my life will become a crazy flight.”