But after the first revel in sleep had passed she did a great deal of languid, undisturbed thinking. She seemed detached from her life, and it passed before her, not poignantly, but merely as something to look upon, quietly muse about. Soon she would step back into it, but now she was resting from it, simply viewing it as an interesting thing which kept passing before her. From the very first it came before her, from those days when she was a little girl at home, and she found much quiet entertainment in trying to connect herself of those days with herself of the now. "Am I all one?" she would want to know, and in thinking that over would quite likely fall asleep again. She thought a great deal about her father and mother; they were more real to her than they had been for a long time; but it was hard to connect the Ernestine of that home with the Ernestine who belonged to Karl. There was Georgia, to be sure, who extended clear through. Dear Georgia--how well she had looked Sunday in that beautiful black gown. She remembered such a funny thing, and such a dear thing, Georgia had done once. They had become chums as freshmen and when they were sophomores Georgia came to their house to live, and one night she inadvertently said something which started one of those terrible arguments, and ended in the saying of so many bitter things that Ernestine could not bear it--especially before Georgia, and as soon as she could she left the table and went up to her room. She did not cry, her mother cried so much that it seemed enough for the family, but she sat there very still looking straight ahead--denying herself even the luxury of tears. And then, just when that atmosphere of unhappiness and bitterness seemed pressing down upon her--crushing her--there had come a wild shriek from Georgia--"Ernestine--Ernestine--get your things quick--let's go to the fire!" That was not to be resisted even by a nineteen-year-old girl. She remembered tumbling into her things, running two blocks, and then gasping--"Where is it?" and Georgia replied, gasping too--"Don't know--small boys--said so." And then after running all over town they found there was no fire at all, and that had so overcome them with laughter that she forgot all about those other things which would have given her so miserable an evening. She had had just a little suspicion then, and now she had a firm conviction, that Georgia never heard small boys say anything about fire that night. Bless Georgia's big heart--she loved her for just such things as inventing fires for unhappy people to go to.