home. And during the
days of his convalescence he planned and plotted for the consummation
of his hopes.

But he found her more difficult to-day. The eyes were a shade more
sad, and the smile would not come to banish the shadows. The sweet
mouth, too, always drooping slightly at the corners, seemed to droop
more than usual to-day. He tried, in vain, every topic that he thought
would interest her, but at last himself began to experience the
depression that seemed to weigh so desperately on her. And strangely
enough this dispiriting influence conjured up in his mind a morbid
memory, that until then had utterly escaped him. It was the dream he
had the night before his awakening. And almost unconsciously he spoke
of it.

"You remember the day I woke to find myself here, Danny?" he said. "It
just occurs to me now that I wasn't unconscious all the time before. I
distinctly remember dreaming. Perhaps I was only asleep."

The girl shook her head.

"You were more than asleep," she said portentously.

"Anyhow, I distinctly remember a dream I had. I should say it was
'nightmare.' It was about your father. He'd got me by the throat,
and--what's the matter?"

Diane started, and, to Tresler's alarm, looked like fainting; but she
recovered at once.

"Nothing," she said, "only--only I can't bear to think of that time,
and then--then--father strangling you! Don't think of your dream.
Let's talk of something else."

Tresler's alarm abated at once; he laughed softly and leant forward
and kissed her.

"Our future--our little home. Eh, dearest?" he suggested tenderly.

She returned his embrace and made a pitiful attempt to smile back into
the eyes which looked so eagerly into hers. And now, for the first
time, her lover began to understand that there really was something
amiss with her. It was that look, so wistful, so appealing, that
roused his apprehension. He pressed her to tell him her trouble,
until, for sheer misery, she could keep it from him no longer.

"It's nothing," she faltered, with trembling lips.

Watching her face with a lover's jealousy he kept silence, for he knew
that her first words were only her woman's preliminary to something
she considered serious.

"Jack," she said presently, settling all her attention upon her work,
"you've never asked me anything about myself. Isn't that unusual?
Perhaps you are not interested, or perhaps"--her head bent lower over
her work--"you, with your generous heart, are re