This is what passed in the mind of Natalie’s mistress as she lay warmly in her bed. She lay looking at the nightlight shadows, but with this last thought she sat upright, and looked round her. Yes, she must have been asleep, for the nightlight was burning brightly and fully, as it does when it has been alight some time; not showing that melancholy little humpbacked flame with which its vigil commences. “I wonder what time it is,” thought Clare, “I wish I had remembered to bring Natalie up to bed with me.” She lay down again, and tried to go to sleep, but one feels very wide awake indeed if one keeps thinking of one thing in particular. You feel even if you buttoned your lids down, they would still flutter wide. There is a writer called George Herbert of whom you have heard, and in one of his poems he says, I hasted to my bed, But when I thought to sleep out all these faults (I sigh to speak) I found that some had stuffed the bed with thoughts, I would say thorns, and rest was impossible. So it was with Clare. She kept seeing Natalie nose downwards. “I’ll go and fetch her,” she said, and she was out of bed in a twink. Quietly she passed through her little room to the door, passing all the familiar shadows. There was the big one cast by the cupboard, that looked like a cloaked figure by the door. And there was the black corner with the sharp shadow jutting out of it, that was really only the chair-back, for she had moved the chair one night to make sure. And there lay her little pile of clothes on the chair itself, but even the sight of these did not make her remember to put on her slippers, and passing all these things and so through the room, she opened the door, and went out into the passage. How light she felt! as if she’d left her body in bed and was going downstairs in her soul. The stair-rods touched the back of her heel strangely cold; how soft and deep the carpet was. The floor round about the big landing window was flooded by moonlight, and by this Clare moved, but it did not reach very far, and soon she had to feel along the wall towards the drawing-room. Then she saw beneath the door a thin streak of light shed on the carpet, showing the lights had not yet been put out within. “I wonder if they’ve been forgotten, or if Mummie’s still in there,” thought Clare, and she turned the handle. The room was partially lit by one of the lamps, and Clare ran in to seize Natalie. There she lay, her furry eyelashes sweeping the faultless contour of a china cheek.