I was near saying something very wild and foolish, but I did not. "I won't keep you a moment," said he--"just come a little nearer the window; I want you to look at something that may interest you." I did go a little nearer. I was moving as he commanded, as if I had been mesmerised. "You lost," he continued, "shortly before your illness, the only photograph you possessed of your sister Helen? But why are you so put out by it? Why should you tremble so violently? It is only I, you know; you need not mind. You dropped that on the floor of a jeweller's shop one night, when I and Droqville happened to be there together, and I picked it up; it represents you both together. I want to restore it; here it is." I extended my hand to take it. I don't know whether I spoke, but the portrait faded suddenly from my sight, and darkness covered everything. I heard his voice, like that of a person talking in excitement, a long way off, at the other side of a wall in another room--it was no more than a hum, and even that was growing fainter. I forgot everything, in utter unconsciousness, for some seconds. When I opened my eyes, water was trickling down my face and forehead, and the window was open. I sighed deeply. I saw him looking over me with a countenance of gloom and anxiety. In happy forgetfulness of all that had passed, I smiled and said: "Oh, Richard! Thank God!" and stretched my arms to him. "That's right--quite right," he said; "you may have every confidence in me." The dreadful recollection began to return. "Don't get up yet," he said, earnestly, and even tenderly; "you're not equal to it. Don't think of leaving me--you must have confidence in me. Why didn't you trust me long ago?--trust me altogether? Fear nothing while I am near you." So he continued speaking, until my recollection had quite returned. "Why, darling, will you not trust me? Can you be surprised at my being wounded by your reserve? How have I deserved it? Forget the pain of this discovery, and remember only that against all the world, to the last hour of my life, with my last thought, the last drop of my blood, I am your defender." He kissed my hands passionately; he drew me towards him, and kissed my lips. He murmured caresses and vows of unalterable love--nothing could be more tender and impassioned. I was relieved by a passionate burst of tears. "It's over now," he said--"it's all over; you'll forgive me, won't you? I have more to forgive, darling, than you--the hardest of all things to forgive in one whom we idolise--a want of confidence in us. You ought to have told me all this before." I told him, as well as I could between my sobs, that there was no need to tell any one of a madness which had nothing to do with waking thoughts or wishes, and was simply the extravagance of delirium--that I was then actually in fever, had been at the point of death, and that Mr. Carmel knew everything about it.