r to look
for her. My baby is in the water, you know; I put her in. She isn't
dead, but she's there, only I can't find her. Day told me that once you
got into the water to look for her too, but you gave it up too easy, and
no one else has ever so much as got in to help me find her."

The last part of the speech was spoken in a dreary monotone. She stopped
with a heart-broken sigh that expressed hopeless loneliness in this mad
quest.

"The baby is dead," he said gently.

She answered him with eager, excited voice:

"No, she isn't; that's where you are wrong. You put it on the stone that
she was dead. When I came out of th' asylum I went to look at the stone,
and I laughed. But I liked you to make the stone; that's why I like you,
because nobody else put up a stone for her."

Caius laid a cool hand on the feverish one she was now brandishing at
him.

"You are dying, you say"--pityingly. "It is better for you to think that
your baby is dead, for when you die you will go to her."

The woman laughed, not harshly, but happily.

"She isn't dead. She came back to me once. She was grown a big girl, and
had a wedding-ring on her hand. Who do you think she was married to? I
thought perhaps it was you."

The repetition of this old question came from her lips so suddenly that
Caius dropped her hand and stepped back a pace. He felt his heart
beating. Was it a good omen? There have been cases where a half-crazed
brain has been known, by chance or otherwise, to foretell the future.
The question that was now for the second time repeated to him seemed to
his hope like an instance of this second sight, only half understood by
the eye that saw it.

"It was not your little daughter that came back, Mrs. Day. It was her
cousin, who is very like her, and she came to help you when you were
ill, and to be a daughter to you."

She looked at him darkly, as if the saner powers of her mind were
struggling to understand; but in a minute the monomania had again
possession of her.

"She had beautiful hair," she said; "I stroked it with my hand; it
curled just as it used to do. Do you think I don't know my own child?
But she had grown quite big, and her ring was made of gold. I would like
to see her again now before I die."

Very wistfully she spoke of the beauty and kindness of the girl whose
visit had cheered her. The poor crazed heart was full of longing for the
one presence that could give her any comfort this side of death.

"I t