lp me with the
rest to-night. Isn't there any train before the five o'clock?"

"No," said Richard, uneasily. "Pauline, I think you'd better not arrange
to go away to-morrow."

"If you don't take me out of this house I shall go mad. I have been
thinking about it all day, and I know I shall."

Richard was silent for a moment, then, with the wise instinct of
affection, wonderful in man, and in a man who had had no experience in
dealing with diseased or suffering minds, he acquiesced in my plan to
go; told me that we would take the earliest train, and interested me in
thoughts about my packing. About nine o'clock he came to my room-door,
and I heard some one with him. It was the Doctor.

I turned upon Richard a fierce look, and said, very quietly, he might go
away, for I would not see the Doctor. After that, they tried me with
Sophie, but with less success; and, finally, Richard came back alone,
with a glass in his hand.

"Take this, Pauline, it will make you sleep."

I wanted to sleep very much, so I took it.

Bettina had finished my packing, and had laid my travelling dress and
hat upon a chair.

"Shall Bettina come and sleep on the floor, by your bed?" asked Richard,
anxiously.

"No, I would not have her for the world."

"Maybe you might not wake in time," said Richard, warily.

That was very true: so I let Bettina come. Richard gave her some
instructions at the door, and she came in and arranged things for the
night, and lay down on a mattress at the foot of my bed.

The sedative which the Doctor sent did not work very well. I had very
little sleep, and that full of such hideous, freezing dreams, that every
time I woke, I found Bettina standing by my bed, looking at me with
alarm. I had been screaming and moaning, she said, The screaming and
moaning and sleeping (such as it was), were all over in about two hours,
and then I had the rest of the night to endure, with the same strange,
light feeling in my head--the restlessness not much, but
somewhat abated.

I was very glad that Bettina was in the room, for though she was sleepy,
and always a little stupid, she was human, and I was a coward, both in
the matter of loneliness and of suffering. I made her sit by me, and
take hold of my hand, and I asked her several times if she had ever been
with any one that died, or that--I did not quite dare to ask her about
going mad.

My questions seemed to trouble her. She crossed herself, and shuddered,
and said, No