as I might live.
There was some fascination which went deeper than my eyes or my flesh or
my heart--down deep into the very depths of my soul. My mind was all in
a whirl, so that I could hardly think coherently. It all was like a
dream; the reality seemed far away. It was not possible to doubt that
the phantom figure which had been so close to me during the dark hours of
the night was actual flesh and blood. Yet she was so cold, so cold!
Altogether I could not fix my mind to either proposition: that it was a
living woman who had held my hand, or a dead body reanimated for the time
or the occasion in some strange manner.

The difficulty was too great for me to make up my mind upon it, even had
I wanted to. But, in any case, I did not want to. This would, no doubt,
come in time. But till then I wished to dream on, as anyone does in a
dream which can still be blissful though there be pauses of pain, or
ghastliness, or doubt, or terror.

So I closed the window and drew the curtain again, feeling for the first
time the cold in which I had stood on the wet marble floor of the terrace
when my bare feet began to get warm on the soft carpet. To get rid of
the chill feeling I got into the bed on which _she_ had lain, and as the
warmth restored me tried to think coherently. For a short while I was
going over the facts of the night--or what seemed as facts to my
remembrance. But as I continued to think, the possibilities of any
result seemed to get less, and I found myself vainly trying to reconcile
with the logic of life the grim episode of the night. The effort proved
to be too much for such concentration as was left to me; moreover,
interrupted sleep was clamant, and would not be denied. What I dreamt
of--if I dreamt at all--I know not. I only know that I was ready for
waking when the time came. It came with a violent knocking at my door.
I sprang from bed, fully awake in a second, drew the bolt, and slipped
back to bed. With a hurried "May I come in?" Aunt Janet entered. She
seemed relieved when she saw me, and gave without my asking an
explanation of her perturbation:

"Oh, laddie, I hae been so uneasy aboot ye all the nicht. I hae had
dreams an' veesions an' a' sorts o' uncanny fancies. I fear that--" She
was by now drawing back the curtain, and as her eyes took in the marks of
wet all over the floor the current of her thoughts changed:

"Why, laddie, whativer hae ye been doin' wi' yer baith? Oh, the me