her to secure a long,
long sleep. "Out of the sight of this world"--she muttered the words as
she sought the chloral--"I'll sleep, I'll sleep, I must sleep. Sleep or
death, one or the other, so long as I am out of the sight of this
world." But in her frenzy of desire for sleep she overlooked the slim
bottle with the slim blond cork. Yet it stood on the toilet-table amid
other bottles, right under her eyes, but over and over again she passed
it by, until, frightened at not finding it, she opened drawer after
drawer, and rushed to her wardrobe thinking it might be there. She
sought for it, throwing her things about, and, not finding it anywhere,
a cold sweat broke over her forehead. Another sleepless night and she
must go mad. If she did not find it, she must find another way out of
this agony, and the thought of cutting her throat, or throwing herself
out of the window, flashed across her mind. "Sleep I must have--sleep,
sleep, sleep!" she muttered, as with fearing fingers she emptied out the
contents of her little workbox, where odds and ends collected. It was
her scapular that came up under her hand, and at the sight of it, all
her mad revolt was hushed, and a calm settled upon her. "A miracle, a
miracle," she murmured, "the Virgin has done this; she interceded for
me;" and at the same moment, catching sight of the chloral right under
her very eyes, she could no longer doubt the miraculous interposition of
the Virgin. For how otherwise could that bottle have escaped her notice?
She had looked at the very place where it stood many times, and had not
seen it; she had moved the other bottles and she had not seen it. The
Virgin had taken it away--she was sure it was not there five minutes
ago--or else the Virgin had blinded her eyes to it. A miracle had
happened; and in a quivering peace of mind and an intense joy of the
heart, she mended the strings of her broken scapular. Then she hung it
round her neck, and kneeling by the bedside, she said the prayers that
it enjoined; and when she got into bed she saw a light shining in one
corner of the room, and, sure that it was the Virgin who had come in
person to visit her, she continued her prayers till she fell asleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

A knock came at her door, and Merat was glad to hear that Mademoiselle
had slept. She noticed that the sleeping-draught had not been taken, and
picking up the various things that Evelyn had scattered in her search,
she wondered at the