it again at the Marriage Service, and impatiently
threw it back into the drawer. This time, after turning the lock, she
took the key away, walked with it in her hand to the open window, and
threw it violently from her into the garden. It fell on a bed thickly
planted with flowers. It was invisible; it was lost. The sense of its
loss seemed to relieve her.

"Something may happen on Friday; something may happen on Saturday;
something may happen on Sunday. Three days still!"

She closed the green shutters outside the window and drew the curtains
to darken the room still more. Her head felt heavy; her eyes were
burning hot. She threw herself on her bed, with a sullen impulse to
sleep away the time. The quiet of the house helped her; the darkness of
the room helped her; the stupor of mind into which she had fallen had
its effect on her senses; she dropped into a broken sleep. Her restless
hands moved incessantly, her head tossed from side to side of the
pillow, but still she slept. Ere long words fell by ones and twos
from her lips; words whispered in her sleep, growing more and more
continuous, more and more articulate, the longer the sleep lasted--words
which seemed to calm her restlessness and to hush her into deeper
repose. She smiled; she was in the happy land of dreams; Frank's name
escaped her. "Do you love me, Frank?" she whispered. "Oh, my darling,
say it again! say it again!"

The time passed, the room grew darker; and still she slumbered and
dreamed. Toward sunset--without any noise inside the house or out to
account for it--she started up on the bed, awake again in an instant.
The drowsy obscurity of the room struck her with terror. She ran to the
window, pushed open the shutters, and leaned far out into the evening
air and the evening light. Her eyes devoured the trivial sights on the
beach; her ears drank in the welcome murmur of the sea. Anything to
deliver her from the waking impression which her dreams had left! No
more darkness, no more repose. Sleep that came mercifully to others came
treacherously to her. Sleep had only closed her eyes on the future, to
open them on the past.

She went down again into the parlor, eager to talk--no matter how idly,
no matter on what trifles. The room was empty. Perhaps Mrs. Wragge had
gone to her work--perhaps she was too tired to talk. Magdalen took her
hat from the table and went out. The sea that she had shrunk from, a few
hours since, looked friendly now. How lovel