comfort of his touch, the
eyes had closed again, this time of their own accord, and the head lay
calmly back upon the pillows. She gently straightened the bed clothes.
She watched him for some minutes, shading the candle carefully with one
hand. There was a smile of strangest peace upon the face.

Then, blowing out the candle, she knelt down and prayed before getting
back into bed. But no sleep came to her. She lay awake all night
thinking, wondering, praying, until at length with the chorus of the
birds and the glimmer of the dawn upon the green blind, she fell into a
slumber of complete exhaustion.

But while she slept the wind continued roaring in the Forest further
out. The sound came closer--sometimes very close indeed.

~V~

With the departure of Sanderson the significance of the curious
incidents waned, because the moods that had produced them passed away.
Mrs. Bittacy soon afterwards came to regard them as some growth of
disproportion that had been very largely, perhaps, in her own mind. It
did not strike her that this change was sudden for it came about quite
naturally. For one thing her husband never spoke of the matter, and for
another she remembered how many things in life that had seemed
inexplicable and singular at the time turned out later to have been
quite commonplace.

Most of it, certainly, she put down to the presence of the artist and to
his wild, suggestive talk. With his welcome removal, the world turned
ordinary again and safe. The fever, though it lasted as usual a short
time only, had not allowed of her husband's getting up to say good-bye,
and she had conveyed his regrets and adieux. In the morning Mr.
Sanderson had seemed ordinary enough. In his town hat and gloves, as she
saw him go, he seemed tame and unalarming.

"After all," she thought as she watched the pony-cart bear him off,
"he's only an artist!" What she had thought he might be otherwise her
slim imagination did not venture to disclose. Her change of feeling was
wholesome and refreshing. She felt a little ashamed of her behavior. She
gave him a smile--genuine because the relief she felt was genuine--as he
bent over her hand and kissed it, but she did not suggest a second
visit, and her husband, she noted with satisfaction and relief, had said
nothing either.

The little household fell again into the normal and sleepy routine to
which it was accustomed. The name of Arthur Sanderson was rarely if ever
mentioned. Nor, for