did not stir; she was resting in
peace; let her rest as long as she would. For more than an hour she lay
there in my arms; I grew stiff and very weary, but I did not move. At
last I believe that in very truth she slept.

The clock in the tower struck midnight, and the quarter, and the
half-hour. I had rehearsed what I should say to my mother and what to
Hammerfeldt. I had dreamed how this night should knit her and me so
closely that we could never again drift apart, that now we knew one
another and for each of us what was superficial in the other existed no
more, but was swept away by the flood of full sympathy. She and I
against the world if need be!

A shiver ran through her; she opened her eyes wide and wider, looking
round the room no longer in fear, but in a sort of wonder. Her gaze
rested an instant on my face, she drew her arm from round my neck and
rose to her feet, pushing away my arm. There she stood for a moment with
a strange, fretful, ashamed look on her face. She tossed her head,
flinging her hair back behind her shoulders. I had taken her hand and
still held it; now she drew it also away.

"What must you think of me?" she said. "Good gracious, I'm in my
nightgown."

She walked across to the looking-glass and stood opposite to it.

"What a fright I look!" she said. "How long have I been here?"

"I don't know; more than an hour."

"It was horrid in bed to-night," she said in a half-embarrassed yet
half-absent way. "I got thinking about--about all sorts of things, and I
was frightened."

The change in her mood sealed my lips.

"I hope mother hasn't noticed that my room's empty. No, of course not;
she must be in bed long ago. Will you take me back to my room,
Augustin?"

"Yes," said I.

She came up to me, looked at me for a moment, then bent down to me as I
sat in my chair and kissed my forehead.

"You're a dear boy," she said. "Was I quite mad?"

"I meant what I said," I declared, as I stood up. "I mean it still."

"Ah," said she, flinging her hands out, "poor Augustin, you mean it
still! Take me along the corridor, dear, I'm afraid to go alone."

Sometimes I blame myself that I submitted to the second mood as
completely as I had responded to the first; but I was staggered by the
change, and the old sense of distance scattered for an hour was
enveloping me again.

One protest I made.

"Are we to do nothing, then?" I asked in a low whisper.

"We're to go to our beds like good children