kissed it.

"It is like waking into heaven to see your face, Seer Marcous, darling,"
she whispered.

"I hope heaven is peopled by a better-looking set of fellows," I said.

"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta. "Don't you know you are beautiful?"

"You mustn't throw an old jest in my teeth, Carlotta," said I, and I
reminded her how she had once screamed with laughter when I had told her
I was very beautiful.

Carlotta listened patiently until I had ended, and then she said, with a
little sigh:

"You cannot understand, Seer Marcous, darling. I have been thinking of
my little baby and the angels--and all the angels are like you."

To cover the embarrassment my modesty underwent, I laughed and drew the
picture of myself with long flaxen hair and white wings.

"My angels hadn't got wings," said Carlotta, seriously. "They all wore
dressing-gowns. They were real angels. And the one that was most like
you brought my baby in his arms for me to kiss; and when he put it on a
white cloud to sleep, and took me up in his arms instead and carried me
away, away, away through the air, I didn't cry at leaving baby. Wasn't
that funny? I snuggled up close to him--like that"--she illustrated the
action of "snuggling" beneath the bed-clothes--"and it was so comfy."

The pale sunshine of a fine February morning filtered into the room from
behind the curtains. I turned off the dimmed electric lamp and let full
daylight into the room.

"Oh!" cried Carlotta, turning to the window, "how lovely the good
sun is! It is more like heaven than ever. Do you know," she added,
mysteriously, "just before I woke it was all dark, and I had lost my
angels and I was looking for them."

I counselled her sagely to look for no more members of the Hierarchy _en
deshabille_, but to content herself with the humbler denizens of this
planet. She pressed my hand.

"I'll try to be contented, Seer Marcous, darling."

She did her best, poor child, when I was by; but I heard that often she
would sit by a little pile of garments and take them up one by one and
cry her heart out--so that though she quickly recovered, her cheeks
remained wan and drawn, and pain lingered in her eyes. The weather
changed to fog and damp and she spent the days crouching by the fire,
sometimes not stirring a muscle for an hour together. Her favourite seat
was the fender-stool in the drawing-room. Her own boudoir downstairs,
where she used to receive instruction from the excellent Miss Grig