articulated.

Then she opened her eyes and looked about her quite naturally. Her
glance rested on Dalrymple's face. Suddenly realizing that she was not
veiled, she drew the coverlet up over her face. It is a peculiarity of
such cases, that the patient returns almost immediately to ordinary
consciousness when the moment of danger is past.

"Go!" she said, with more energy than might have been expected. "This is
a religious house. You must not be here."

Dalrymple retired into the parlour again, shutting the door behind him,
and waited for Maria Addolorata, for it was now indispensable that he
should give her directions for the night. During the few minutes which
passed while he was alone, he stood looking out of the window. The
excitement of the last half-hour had cut off from his present state of
mind the emotion he had felt before the abbess's cry for help, but had
not decreased the impression it had left. While he was helping the sick
lady there had not been one instant in which he had not felt that there
was more than the life of a half-saintly old woman in the balance, and
that her death meant the end of his meetings with Maria Addolorata.
Annetta's words came back to him, 'she will knead her pillow with tears
and make her bread of it.'

Several minutes passed, and the door opened softly and closed again.
Maria Addolorata came up to him, where he stood by the window. She did
not speak for a moment, but he saw that her hand was pressed to her
side.

"I have spent a bad half-hour," she said at last, with something like a
gasp.

"It is the worst half-hour I ever spent in my life," answered Dalrymple.
"I thought it was all over," he added.

"Yes," she said, "I thought it was all over."

He could hear his heart beating in his ears. He could almost hear hers.
His hand went out toward her, cold and unsteady, but it fell to his side
again almost instantly. But for the heart-beats, it seemed to him that
there was an appalling stillness in the air of the quiet room. His
manly face grew very pale. He slowly bit his lip and looked out of the
window. An enormous temptation was upon him. He knew that if she moved
to leave his side he should take her and hold her. There was a tiny drop
of blood on his lip now. Something in him made him hope against himself
that she would speak, that she would say some insignificant dry words.
But every inch of his strong fibre and every ounce of his hot blood
hoped that she would move, i