s and the unimposing spire of St. Aloysius.
With the same air, questioning yet as in a dream, she turned to the
western window, which was open. Below, in its wintry dulness, lay the
garden of the College, bounded by an old gray wall which divided it from
the straggling street; beyond that, a mass of slate roofs. But a certain
glory was on the slate roofs and all the garden that was not in shadow.
For away over Wytham, where the blue vapor floated in the folds of the
hills, blending imperceptibly with the deep brown of the leafless woods,
sunset had lifted a wide curtain of cloud and showed between the gloom
of heaven and earth, a long straight pool of yellow light.

She leaned out of the window. A mild fresh air which seemed to be
pouring over the earth through that rift in heaven which the sunset had
made, breathed freshly on her face and the yellow light shone on her
amber hair, which lay on her shoulders about the length of the hair of
an angel in some old Florentine picture.

Miss Burt in galoshes and with a wrap over her head was coming up the
garden. She caught sight of that vision of gold and pale blue in the
window and smiled and waved her hand to Milly Flaxman. The vision
withdrew, trembling slightly as though with cold, and closed the
window.

Tims came in, carrying a boiled egg and a plate of bread and butter.
Tims put down the egg-cup and the plate on the table before she relaxed
the wrinkle of carefulness and grinned triumphantly at her patient.

"Well, old girl," she asked; "what do you say to hypnotism now? Put
_you_ to sleep, right enough, anyhow. Know what time it is?"

The awakened sleeper made a few steps forward, leaned her hands on the
table, on the other side of which Tims stood, and gazed upon her with
startling intentness. Then she began to speak in a rapid, urgent voice.
Her words were in themselves ordinary and distinct, yet what she said
was entirely incomprehensible, a nightmare of speech, as though some
talking-machine had gone wrong and was pouring out a miscellaneous stock
of verbs, nouns, adjectives and the rest without meaning or cohesion.
Certain words reappeared with frequency, but Tims had a feeling that the
speaker did not attach their usual meaning to them. This travesty of
language went on for what appeared to the transfixed and terrified
listener quite a long time. At length the serious, almost tragic,
babbler, meeting with no response save the staring horror of Tims's too
ex