and absent, still and changeless, they were
eyes that seemed to be fixed on something far away. Even his voice
was altered when he spoke next. It had dropped to a quiet, vacant,
monotonous tone. I had heard something like it while I was watching by
my husband's bedside, at the time of his delirium--when Eustace's mind
appeared to be too weary to follow his speech. Was the end so near as
this?

"I called her Cunegonda," he repeated. "And I called the other--"

He stopped once more.

"And you called the other Damoride," I said.

Ariel looked up at him with a broad stare of bewilderment. She pulled
impatiently at the sleeve of his jacket to attract his notice.

"Is this the story, Master?" she asked.

He answered without looking at her, his changeless eyes still fixed, as
it seemed, on something far away.

"This is the story," he said, absently. "But why Cunegonda? why
Damoride? Why not Mistress and Maid? It's easier to remember Mistress
and Maid--"

He hesitated; he shivered as he tried to raise himself in his chair.
Then he seemed to rally "What did the Maid say to the Mistress?" he
muttered. "What? what? what?" He hesitated again. Then something seemed
to dawn upon him unexpectedly. Was it some new thought that had struck
him? or some lost thought that he had recovered? Impossible to say.

He went on, suddenly and rapidly went on, in these strange words:

"'The letter,' the Maid said; 'the letter. Oh my heart. Every word
a dagger. A dagger in my heart. Oh, you letter. Horrible, horrible,
horrible letter.'"

What, in God's name, was he talking about? What did those words mean?

Was he unconsciously pursuing his faint and fragmentary recollections
of a past time at Gleninch, under the delusion that he was going on with
the story? In the wreck of the other faculties, was memory the last to
sink? Was the truth, the dreadful truth, glimmering on me dimly through
the awful shadow cast before it by the advancing, eclipse of the brain?
My breath failed me; a nameless horror crept through my whole being.

Benjamin, with his pencil in his hand, cast one warning look at me.
Ariel was quiet and satisfied. "Go on, Master," was all she said. "I
like it! I like it! Go on with the story."

He went on--like a man sleeping with his eyes open, and talking in his
sleep.

"The Maid said to the Mistress. No--the Mistress said to the Maid. The
Mistress said, 'Show him the letter. Must, must, must do it.' The Maid
said, 'No.