Your eyes rest on her with satisfaction;
she forms such a charming picture
of housewifely repose and industry—' Ohne
Hast ohne Rast.' You like to let your
eyes rest upon her when you choose to
look up from your paper, your review, or
your wine. You feel at liberty to study
her at your leisure, as you might a
picture. It never occurs to you that mocking,
miserable, mad thoughts may be
haunting her brain—that passion, desperation,
despair, or that utter weariness,
worse than all, may be in her soul!"

This woman, sitting by the shaded lamp
in my room, worked on and on.

By-and-by, some lines of the throat and
bust and shoulders began to be suggestive
to my slow brain. They seemed to belong
to some remembered person. To whom?

As well as I could see, this woman was
dressed in white; a white, short gown,
such as the peasant women wear, open at
the throat, loose at the sleeve; probably
because of the heat, she had taken off her
outer dress. As I was straining to remember,
a great sense of pressure upon my brain,
descending on me, and grasping me with
the tightening grasp of a cold and heavy
hand, stopped me. I should have swooned
into sleep, but just then the woman laid
down her work, looked at a watch hanging
near her, rose, and came towards the bed.

Immediately, I closed my eyes; but
voluntarily.

She came close, bent over me, as if
listening for my breath. I felt her breath:
was conscious even of the warmth and
fragrance of her vitality, as she stooped
over me. Presently she laid her hand upon
my clammy forehead.

Instinct revealed to me who she was:
without opening my eyes, I saw her. A
cold sweat of horror broke out over me;
such life as was left me, seemed oozing
away through my pores; I was ready to
sink into a swoon of death-like depth.

But I heard these words:

"That he may not die, great God, that
he may not die!" And they arrested me
on the brink of that horrible shaking away,
to hold me on the brink instead of letting
me fall through.

Somehow, those words, though they
saved me for that moment, did not remove
my sense of horror and fear, any more than
is the victim who knows himself singled
out for death by slow torture, comforted and
reassured by the means taken to bring him
back from his first swoon to consciousness
of his next agony.

Was it, that physical weakness, and
nearness to death, gave me clearer vision
than that with which I saw later, when my
senses had gathered power?

It was fear. I now experienced—there
is no denying it—a most horrible fear. A
shrinking of the spirit and of the flesh.

Why was I given over to her?

Was this another world, in which she
had power given her to torment me? Was
this my hell?

I, weak as a child, was alone with
her. That awful woman with the terrible
eyes, and the arms uplifted to curse me!
The woman of my dread and dreadful
dreams and fever-fancies.

Here, I believe, the icy waters of that
horrible cold swoon closed over my
consciousness.

But by-and-by (and whether after
moments, hours, or even days, I had no
means of knowing), when I felt the gentleness
of the hand that was busy about me—
wiping the clammy moisture from my forehead,
bathing it with ether, holding to my
nostrils a strong reviving essence, wetting
my stiff lips with brandy; when I felt a soft
strong arm under my neck, slightly raising
my head to lean it on the yielding breast—
when I felt the soothing comfort of the
warmth, the softness, the fragrance of
vitality, after the wormy chill of the grave,
whose taste and smell seemed to linger in
my mouth and nostrils—then it seemed not
hell but heaven to which I was delivered.

Presently she gave me to drink some
restorative medicine which was measured
out ready for me. I swallowed it. She
wiped my lips. I closed my eyes. Silence
was, as yet, unbroken between us.

That medicine was strong stuff: a few
moments after I had taken it, life, and
conscious delight in the sense of life, went
tingling through me.

Almost afraid to speak, and yet too full
of wonder to remain silent, after I had for
some moments listened to the steady,
somewhat heavy, pulsations of the heart
so near which I leaned, I asked:

"Have I been long ill?"

"A month."

She had paused before she spoke, and
her breast had heaved high—was it, I have
wondered since, in proud disgust to bear
my hated head upon it?

She did not look at me as she spoke, I
knew, for I didn't feel her breath.

"What sort of illness?"

"Congestion of the brain."

"Is the danger past?"