Very shakily, for he was sadly knocked about, Geoffrey hobbled down the long narrow room and through the door, which was ajar.  The opposite door was also set half open.  He knocked softly, and getting no answer pushed it wide and looked in, thinking that he had, perhaps, made some mistake as to the room.  On a sofa placed about two-thirds down its length, lay Beatrice asleep.  She was wrapped in a kind of dressing-gown of some simple blue stuff, and all about her breast and shoulders streamed her lovely curling hair.  Her sweet face was towards him, its pallor relieved only by the long shadow of the dark lashes and the bent bow of the lips.  One white wrist and hand hung down almost to the floor, and beneath the spread curtain of the sunlit hair her bosom heaved softly in her sleep.  She looked so wondrously beautiful in her rest that he stopped almost awed, and gazed, and gazed again, feeling as though a present sense and power were stilling his heart to silence.  It is dangerous to look upon such quiet loveliness, and very dangerous to feel that pressure at the heart.  A truly wise man feeling it would have fled, knowing that seeds sown in such silences may live to bloom upon a bitter day, and shed their fruit into the waters of desolation.  But Geoffrey was not wise—­who would have been?  He still stood and gazed till the sight stamped itself so deeply on the tablets of his heart that through all the years to come no heats of passion, no frosts of doubt, and no sense of loss could ever dull its memory.

The silent sun shone on, the silent woman slept, and in silence the watcher gazed.  And as he looked a great fear, a prescience of evil that should come, entered into Geoffrey and took possession of him.  A cloud without crossed the ray of sunlight and turned it.  It wavered, for a second it rested on his breast, flashed back to hers, then went out; and as it flashed and died, he seemed to know that henceforth, for life till death, ay! and beyond, his fate and that sleeping woman’s were one fate.  It was but a momentary knowledge; the fear shook him, and was gone almost before he understood its foolishness.  But it had been with him, and in after days he remembered it.

Just then Beatrice woke, opening her grey eyes.  Their dreamy glance fell upon him, looking through him and beyond him, rather than at him.  Then she raised herself a little and stretching out both her arms towards him, spoke aloud.

“So have you have come back to me at last,” she said.  “I knew that you would come and I have waited.”

He made no answer, he did not know what to say; indeed he began to think that he also must be dreaming.  For a little while Beatrice still looked at him in the same absent manner, then suddenly started up, the red blood streaming to her brow.

“Why, Mr. Bingham,” she said, “is it really you?  What was it that I said?  Oh, pray forgive me, whatever it was.  I have been asleep dreaming such a curious dream, and talking in my sleep.”