her, and then in a whisper I called her by name:
“Lucy!”
There was a moment's silence, as if the soul of the sleeper were listening, and then in a toneless, somnambulistic voice she answered,
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the day we parted in London?”
There was another pause, and then came a flood of words:
“What a lovely sunset! See how sweetly the red glow stretches down the river. How beautiful the world is! And how good!”
I remembered the words. I had heard her speak them before. She was living over again the incidents of our last evening at Sir George Chute's.
“What a long, long time it must be before we meet again! Christmas! Will it ever come? I shall count the days like the prisoner of Chillon.”
I remembered how I had answered her when she said this before, and in the same way I answered her again:
“Let us hope that like him you will not become too fond of your prison to leave it for good when I come in the spring to fetch you.”
There was a little trill of laughter, like the ghostly echo of the merry note that danced in my ears on that June night when we sat on the balcony looking down at the sleeping Thames.
“They are lighting the lamps in the drawing room. Would you like me to sing something?”
In another moment my darling was singing from her bed in the breaking sleep of her spirit, just as she had sung to me at that happy parting seven months before:
“And when my seven long years are done——”
Suddenly the voice broke and then frayed away, and the song stopped. Lucy moved and opened her eyes. I was face to face with her, and she looked on me with a bewildered gaze. Then the light of love came into her eyes, and in an ardent, penetrating, passionate tone, she cried, “Robert!” and stretched out her hand.
“I was dreaming of you,” she said. “I thought we were together in London and I was singing.”
“And so you were, my love,” I answered, as well as I was able for the sobs that choked me.
Then she raised berself on her elbow, and realized where we were.
“I remember—you brought the French doctor early this morning. What time is it now?”
I made what shift I could to answer her question, and little by little everything came back. Her distress was more than I could bear to witness, and I crept away.
Yet before I left the room I realized that the hypnotist, who had come to the little table, was pouring brandy from the decanter into the glass.
“Offer her this,” he said to the nurse, who had been hovering about the bed head.
But Lucy only glanced at the glass, and cried, with a look of repulsion and a voice of pain:
“No, no! Take it away. It makes me sick.”
In the agony of my suspense I had forgotten our mission. We had succeeded. The drink crave was gone.
( To be continued.)
