e was no light,
no sound, no change, no pause of repose--and this was eternity: the
eternity of Hell!

* * * * *

Such was one dream-vision out of many that I saw. It must have been at
this time that men were set to watch me day and night (as I afterwards
heard), in order that I might be held down in my bed, when a paroxysm of
convulsive strength made me dangerous to myself and to all about me. The
period too when the doctors announced that the fever had seized on my
brain, and was getting the better of their skill, must have been _this_
period.

But though they gave up my life as lost, I was not to die. There came a
time, at last, when the gnawing fever lost its hold; and I awoke faintly
one morning to a new existence--to a life frail and helpless as the life
of a new-born babe.

I was too weak to move, to speak, to open my eyes, to exert in the
smallest degree any one faculty, bodily or mental, that I possessed. The
first sense of which I regained the use, was the sense of hearing;
and the first sound that I recognised, was of a light footstep which
mysteriously approached, paused, and then retired again gently outside
my door. The hearing of this sound was my first pleasure, the waiting
for its repetition my first source of happy expectation, since I had
been ill. Once more the footsteps approached--paused a moment--then
seemed to retire as before--then returned slowly. A sigh, very faint and
trembling; a whisper of which I could not yet distinguish the import,
caught my ear--and after that, there was silence. Still I waited (oh,
how happily and calmly!) to hear the whisper soon repeated, and to hear
it better when it next came. Ere long, for the third time, the footsteps
advanced, and the whispering accents sounded again. I could now hear
that they pronounced my name--once, twice, three times--very softly and
imploringly, as if to beg the answer which I was still too weak to give.
But I knew the voice: I knew it was Clara's. Long after it had ceased,
the whisper lingered gently on my ear, like a lullaby that alternately
soothed me to slumber, and welcomed me to wakefulness. It seemed to be
thrilling through my frame with a tender, reviving influence--the same
influence which the sunshine had, weeks afterwards, when I enjoyed it
for the first time out of doors.

The next sound that came to me was audible in my room; audible
sometimes, close at my pillow. It was the simplest sound
imagina