e had seemed restless and
nervous, and his nervousness and excitability increased until a violent
headache came on, and Charles, the servant, who attended him, reported
to Mrs. Tracy that his midday meal had been untouched and that he really
seemed quite ill. Then Frank went to him, and sitting down beside him as
he lay upon a couch in the room with Gretchen's picture, said to him,
not unkindly:

'Are you sick to-day? What is the matter?'

For a few moments Arthur made no reply, but lay with his eyes closed as
if he had not heard. Then suddenly rousing himself, he burst out,
vehemently:

'Frank, you think me crazy, or you have thought so, and you have based
that belief in part on the fact that I am always expecting Gretchen. And
so for a long time I have suppressed all mention of her, though I have
never ceased to look for her arrival, since--since--well, I may as well
tell you the truth. I know now that she could not have been with me on
the ship and in the train, although I thought she was. I wrote her to
join me in Liverpool, and fancied she did. But my brain must have been a
little mixed. She did not come with me, but I wrote to her weeks ago,
telling her to come at once, and giving her directions how to find the
park if she should arrive at the station and no one there to meet her.
She has had more than time to get here, but I have said nothing about
sending the carriage for her, as that seemed to annoy you. But to-day,
Frank, to-day'--and Arthur's voice grew softer and pleading, and
trembled as he went on. 'I dreamed of her last night, and to-day she
seems so near to me that more than once I have put out my hand to touch
her. Frank, it is not insanity, this presentiment of mine that she is
near me, that she is coming to me, or tidings of her; it is mind acting
upon mind; her thoughts of me reaching forward and fastening upon my
thoughts of her, making a mental bridge on which to see her coming to
me. And you will send for her. You will let John go again. Think if she
should arrive in this terrible storm and no one there to meet her. You
will send this once, and if she is not there I will not trouble you
again.'

There was something in Arthur's white face which Frank could not resist,
and though he had no idea that anything would come of it, he promised
that John should go.

'Oh, Frank,' Arthur exclaimed, his face brightening at once, 'you have
made me so happy! My headache is quite gone,' and then he began t