Will he, dear? Suppose we go to sleep." But she really meant "you,"
not "we"; for it was a long time before she went to sleep herself. She
had plenty to think of, and wanted to be quiet, conscious of Sally in
the neighbourhood.

* * * * *

We hope our reader was not misled, as we ourselves were, when Mrs.
Nightingale first saw the name on Fenwick's arm, into supposing that
she accepted it as his real name. She knew better. But then, how was
she to tell him his name was Palliser? Think it over.

CHAPTER XIII

OF A SLEEPLESS NIGHT MRS. NIGHTINGALE HAD, AND HOW SALLY WOKE UP
AND TALKED

Was it possible, thought Rosalind in the sleepless night that followed,
that the recurrence of the tennis-garden in Fenwick's mind might
grow and grow, and be a nucleus round which the whole memory of his
life might re-form? Even so she had seen, at a chemical lecture, a
supersaturated solution, translucent and spotless, suddenly fill with
innumerable ramifications from one tiny crystal dropped into it. Might
not this shred of memory chance to be a crystal of the right salt
in the solvent of his mind, and set going a swift arborescence to
penetrate the whole? Might not one branch of that tree be a terrible
branch--one whose leaves and fruit were poisoned and whose stem was
clothed with thorns? A hideous metaphor of the moment--call it the
worst in her life--when her young husband, driven mad with the
knowledge that had just forced its way into his reluctant mind, had
almost struck her away from him, and with angry words, of which the
least was traitress, had broken through the effort of her hands to
hold him, and left her speechless in her despair.

It was such a nightmare idea, this anticipation that next time she met
Gerry's eyes she might see again the anger that was in them on that
blackest of her few married days, might see him again vanish from
her, this time never to return. And it spread an ever growing horror,
greater and greater in the silence and the darkness of the night, till
it filled all space and became a power that thrilled through every
nerve, and denied the right of any other thing in the infinite void
to be known or thought of. Which of us has not been left, with no
protection but our own weak resolutions, to the mercy of a dominant
idea in the still hours when others were near us sleeping whom we
might not wake to say one word to save us?

What would his face be like--ho