hills and tramped until he was tired so that
he might sleep. But by this time he had begun to sleep better, he
knew, and his dreams had ceased to be a terror to him.

"Perhaps," he thought, "my body is growing stronger."

It was growing stronger but--because of the rare peaceful hours when
his thoughts were changed--his soul was slowly growing stronger, too.
He began to think of Misselthwaite and wonder if he should not go home.
Now and then he wondered vaguely about his boy and asked himself what
he should feel when he went and stood by the carved four-posted bed
again and looked down at the sharply chiseled ivory-white face while it
slept and, the black lashes rimmed so startlingly the close-shut eyes.
He shrank from it.

One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon
was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver. The
stillness of lake and shore and wood was so wonderful that he did not
go into the villa he lived in. He walked down to a little bowered
terrace at the water's edge and sat upon a seat and breathed in all the
heavenly scents of the night. He felt the strange calmness stealing
over him and it grew deeper and deeper until he fell asleep.

He did not know when he fell asleep and when he began to dream; his
dream was so real that he did not feel as if he were dreaming. He
remembered afterward how intensely wide awake and alert he had thought
he was. He thought that as he sat and breathed in the scent of the
late roses and listened to the lapping of the water at his feet he
heard a voice calling. It was sweet and clear and happy and far away.
It seemed very far, but he heard it as distinctly as if it had been at
his very side.

"Archie! Archie! Archie!" it said, and then again, sweeter and clearer
than before, "Archie! Archie!"

He thought he sprang to his feet not even startled. It was such a real
voice and it seemed so natural that he should hear it.

"Lilias! Lilias!" he answered. "Lilias! where are you?"

"In the garden," it came back like a sound from a golden flute. "In
the garden!"

And then the dream ended. But he did not awaken. He slept soundly and
sweetly all through the lovely night. When he did awake at last it was
brilliant morning and a servant was standing staring at him. He was an
Italian servant and was accustomed, as all the servants of the villa
were, to accepting without question any strange thing his foreign
master might