The General was a man of swift decision and ready resource. In an instant he had lifted the figure up out of the snow which half enveloped it, and sustained it in one arm, while with the other he sent the reverberating clamor of the door-bell pealing through the house. Then, unlocking the door, he bore his burden lightly into the hall, turned up the gas, and disposed the inanimate form on a chair. He did not know the woman, but it was evident that she was very ill--perhaps dying. When the servant came down, he bade her run with all possible haste for Dr. Lester, who lived only a block or so away. CHAPTER XXXVI.--“I TELL YOU I HAVE LIVED IT DOWN!” Instead of snow and cold and the black terror of being overwhelmed by stormy night, here were light and warmth and a curiously sleepy yet volatile sense of comfort. Jessica’s eyes for a long time rested tranquilly upon what seemed a gigantic rose hanging directly over her head. Her brain received no impression whatever as to why it was there, and there was not the slightest impulse to wonder or to think about it at all. Even when it finally began to descend nearer, and to expand and unfold pale pink leaves, still it was satisfying not to have to make any effort toward understanding it. The transformation went on with infinite slowness before her vacantly contented vision. Upon all sides the outer leaves gradually, little by little, stretched themselves downward, still downward, until they enveloped her as in the bell of some huge inverted lily. Indefinite spaces of time intervened, and then it became vaguely apparent that faint designs of other, smaller flowers were scattered over these large environing leaves, and that a soft, ruddy light came through them. With measured deliberation, as if all eternity were at its disposal, this vast floral cone revealed itself at last to her dim consciousness as being made of some thin, figured cloth. It seemed weeks--months--before she further comprehended that the rose above her was the embroidered centre of a canopy, and that the leaves depending from it in long, graceful curves about her were bed-curtains. After a time she found herself lifting her hand upright and looking at it. It was wan and white like wax, as if it did not belong to her at all. From the wrist there was turned back the delicately quilted cuff of a man’s silk night-shirt. She raised the arm in its novel silken sleeve, and thrust it forward with some unformed notion that it would prove not to be hers. The action pushed aside the curtains, and a glare of light flashed in, under which she shut her eyes and gasped.