n. He asked her if she was ill.

Not a muscle in her moved. He might as well have spoken to the dead.

'Surely,' he said, 'you are not foolish enough to take what I have been
telling you seriously?'

Her lips moved slowly. As it seemed, she was making an effort to speak
to him.

'Louder,' he said. 'I can't hear you.'

She struggled to recover possession of herself. A faint light began to
soften the dull cold stare of her eyes. In a moment more she spoke so
that he could hear her.

'I never thought of the other world,' she murmured, in low dull tones,
like a woman talking in her sleep.

Her mind had gone back to the day of her last memorable interview with
Agnes; she was slowly recalling the confession that had escaped her,
the warning words which she had spoken at that past time. Necessarily
incapable of understanding this, Francis looked at her in perplexity.
She went on in the same dull vacant tone, steadily following out her
own train of thought, with her heedless eyes on his face, and her
wandering mind far away from him.

'I said some trifling event would bring us together the next time. I
was wrong. No trifling event will bring us together. I said I might
be the person who told her what had become of Ferrari, if she forced me
to it. Shall I feel some other influence than hers? Will he force me
to it? When she sees him, shall I see him too?'

Her head sank a little; her heavy eyelids dropped slowly; she heaved a
long low weary sigh. Francis put her arm in his, and made an attempt
to rouse her.

'Come, Countess, you are weary and over-wrought. We have had enough
talking to-night. Let me see you safe back to your hotel. Is it far
from here?'

She started when he moved, and obliged her to move with him, as if he
had suddenly awakened her out of a deep sleep.

'Not far,' she said faintly. 'The old hotel on the quay. My mind's in
a strange state; I have forgotten the name.'

'Danieli's?'

'Yes!'

He led her on slowly. She accompanied him in silence as far as the end
of the Piazzetta. There, when the full view of the moonlit Lagoon
revealed itself, she stopped him as he turned towards the Riva degli
Schiavoni. 'I have something to ask you. I want to wait and think.'

She recovered her lost idea, after a long pause.

'Are you going to sleep in the room to-night?' she asked.

He told her that another traveller was in possession of the room that
night. 'But the manager has reserved it for me to-morro