Then Alice brought my baby and laid him in my arms; my dear, sweet, innocent, sleeping child! what horrible desert had I been wandering in since he was taken from my arms? He was sleeping so quietly, so softly, nothing knew he of the subdued, yet still existing pain, in the bosom his little head was pillowed on. "Sleeping like a child!" I knew now what the common saying meant. My cap and nightdress were wet with the perfumed cool waters Alice had been bathing my brow with, and I had a confused pain and ringing in my head, and the most complete exhaustion over me; but I was better, and felt almost easy in my weakness in mind as well as in body. When the doctor had given me a draught, I suppose to make me sleep, he went away, and I was so much disturbed by the stranger in the room, that Alice sent her downstairs, and herself began to prepare for the night. I remember now, like a picture, the aspect of that little dim room; the single candle burning faintly far away from me; the summer night, scarcely dark; the pale, blue sky, looking in at the edge of the narrow blind; the bright sparkle of the little fire midway in the room, burning with a subdued, quiet glee, as if in triumph over the summer warmth which needed this auxiliary. Beside me was a large, old-fashioned elbow-chair, in which Alice was to watch, or sleep, as she said, and a round table with some eau-de-cologne and phials of medicine, a small flower vase containing some roses, and a book. It was deep twilight here in this corner, but my eyes were accustomed to it, and I could see everything; most clearly of all, I could see my baby's sweet, slumbering face, and feel his breath like balm, rising and falling upon my cheek.