When darkness fell, all grew still, and Sarah Brown took Angela’s advice and went to bed. Angela herself did not follow her own recommendation, and felt a strange disinclination to go to bed. Usually her strong young nerves had given her sleep whenever she had desired it, but this night, when every nerve was on quivering edge, sleep eluded and defied her. She threw her mantle around her and sat for a long time at the open window watching the moon as it rose in silvery splendor over the half-bare woods. How still and sad and woe-begone was the aspect of the country! Only two nights before she had been riding with Isabey through a region almost as still and sad and woe-begone as this, along the weed-grown highway and untraveled forest roads, and now that time was as far removed as if æons had passed. As the thought of Isabey occurred to her she put it resolutely out of her mind and began to think of Neville--how he looked, what he said. She took from her pocket the letter he had given her, and then thrust it back out of sight. She was not to open it unless she had bad news of him. Existence with Neville absent had been strange enough, but with him dead--Angela could scarcely conceive of a world without him. Her heart was oppressed with a thousand griefs and perplexities. If only Isabey had not come into her life, how much easier would all things have been! She remembered Lyddon having told her once, long ago, that human beings in this world suffer or enjoy according to the imagination with which they are endowed, and he had added, “You have a tremendous imagination.” This and many other half-forgotten things came back to her memory, and all suggested struggle and conflict. After midnight she lay down across her hard, coarse bed and fell into a restless and uneasy sleep, haunted by painful dreams. She was glad to waken from it, and, looking at her watch, found that it was four o’clock. Just the time, two nights before, when she had said farewell to Isabey. Life appeared to her all farewells. She rose and went again to the open window, and the scene of two nights before seemed to repeat itself before her eyes, until the miracle of the dawning came. Then Angela’s head dropped upon the window sill and she fell for the first time into a quiet and dreamless sleep.