artake of reality in that that which
is and that which might be, are combined in their semblance of life.
Eliza saw the home she had so long hated and lived its life once more,
but with this difference, that she, her new present self, was there, and
into the old life she brought perforce what knowledge of the world's
refinements she had gained in her year of freedom. The knowledge seemed
to her much more important than it was, but such as it was, she saw it
utilised in the log house, and the old way of life thereby changed, but
changed the more because she, she the child Sissy, reigned there now as
a queen. It was this idea of reigning, of power, that surely now made
this dream--wild, impossible as she still felt it to be--pleasant. But,
as she pondered, arranging small details as a stimulated imagination is
wont to do, she became gradually conscious that if love were to reign
long, the queen of love would be not only queen but slave, and, as by
the inevitable action of a true balance, the slave of love would be a
ruler too. This new conception, as it at first emerged, was not
disagreeable. Her imagination worked on, mapping out days and months to
her fascinated heart. Then Sleep came nearer, and turned the
self-ordered dream into that which the dreamer mistook for reality. In
that far-off home she saw all the bareness and roughness of the lonely
life which, do what she would, she could not greatly alter; and there
again Bates kissed her; she felt his touch in all its reality, and in
her dream she measured the barrenness of the place against the knowledge
that her love was his life.

The soul that lay dreaming in this way was the soul of a heavy-limbed,
ungracious woman. She lay now on the floor in ungainly attitude, and all
the things that were about her in the darkness were of that commonest
type with which ignorance with limited resource has essayed to imitate
some false ideal of finery, and produced such articles as furniture
daubed with painted flowers, jute carpets, and gowns beflounced and
gaudy. Yet this soul, shut off from the world now by the curtain of
sleep, was spoken to by an angel who blended his own being into
recollections of the day, and treated with her concerning the life that
is worthy and the life that is vain.

Eliza awoke with a start. She raised herself up stiff and chilly. She
looked back upon her dream, at first with confusion and then with
contempt. She lit her lamp and the present was aroun