er point.

'Mother,' I said,'I consent to your condition: I will give her
up--but oh, save her! Let there be no dallying, let there be no risk,
mother. Let nothing prevent your going upon the sands in the
morning--early, quite early--and every morning at the ebbing of the
tide.'

'I will keep my word,' she said.

'You will use the fullest and best means to save her?'

'I will keep my word,' she said, and left the room.

'I have saved her!' I cried over and over again, as I sank back on my
pillow. Then the delirium of fever came upon me, and I lay tossing as
upon a sea of fire.

XII

Weak in body and in mind as an infant, I woke again to consciousness.
Through the open window the sunlight, with that tender golden-yellow
tone which comes with morning in England, was pouring between the
curtains, and illuminating the white counterpane. Then a soft breeze
came and slightly moved the curtains, and sent the light and shadows
about the bed and the opposite wall--a breeze laden with the scent I
always associated with Wynne's cottage, the scent of geraniums. I
raised myself on my elbows, and gazed over the geraniums on the
window-sill at the blue sky, which was as free of clouds as though it
were an Italian one, save that a little feathery cloud of a palish
gold was slowly moving towards the west.

'It is shaped like a hand,' I said dreamily, and then came the
picture of Winifred in the churchyard singing, and pointing to just
such a golden cloud, and then came the picture of Tom Wynne reeling
towards us from the church porch, and then came everything in
connection with him and with her; everything down to the very
last words which I had spoken about her to my mother before
unconsciousness had come upon me. But what I did _not_ know--what I
was now burning to know without delay--was what time had passed since
then.

I called out 'Mother!' A nurse, who was sitting in the room, but
hidden from me by a large carved and corniced oak wardrobe, sprang up
and told me that she would go and fetch my mother.

'Mother,' I said, when she entered the room, 'you've been?'

'Yes,' said she, taking a seat by my bedside, and motioning the nurse
to leave us.

'And you were in time, mother!'

'More than in time,' said she. 'There was nothing to do. I have
realised, however, that your extraordinary and horrible story was
true. It was not a fever-dream. The tomb has been desecrated.'

'But, mother, you went as you promised to t