ne on the cliffs. I said to myself,
"This shall be my last search." By this time the news of your illness
and the anxiety I felt about you helped much in blunting the anxiety
I felt about my father's loss. But on this very morning I am speaking
of something very extraordinary happened.

'Don't tell me, Winnie. For God's sake, don't tell me! It will
disturb you; it will make you ill again.'

She looked at me in evident astonishment at my words.

'Don't tell you, Henry? Why, there is nothing to tell,' said she. 'As
I was walking along the sands, looking at the new tongue of land made
by the landslip, I seem to have lost consciousness.'

'And you don't know what caused this?'

'Not in the least; unless it was my anxiety and want of sleep. This
was the beginning of the long illness that I spoke of, and I seem to
have remained quite without consciousness until a few weeks ago. I
often try to make my mind bring back the circumstances under which I
lost consciousness. I throw my thoughts, so to speak, upon a wall of
darkness, and they come reeling back like waves that are dashed
against a cliff.'

'Then don't do so any more, Winnie. I know enough of such matters to
tell you confidently that you never will recall the incidents
connected with your collapse, and that the endeavour to do so is
really injurious to you. What interests me very much more is to know
the circumstances under which you came to yourself. I am dying with
impatience to know all about that.'

II

'When I came to myself,' said Winifred, 'I was in a world as new and
strange and wonderful as that in which Christopher Sly found himself
when he woke up to his new life in Shakespeare's play.'

She paused. She little thought how my flesh kindled with impatience.

'Yes, Winnie,' I said; 'you are going to tell me how, and where, and
when you were restored to life--regained your consciousness, I
mean--unless it will too deeply agitate you to tell me.'

'It would not agitate me in the least, Henry, to tell you all about
it. But it is a long story, and this seems a strange place in which
to tell it, surrounded by these glorious peaks and covered by this
roof of sunrise. But do you tell me all about yourself, all about
your illness, which seems to have been a dreadful one.'

My story, indeed! What was there in my story that I could or dare
tell her? My story would have to be all about herself, and the
tragedy of the supposed curse, and the terrible sei