Here she paused a little, perceiving for the first time, with surprise, that she was standing and walking without her stick or the help of any one’s arm, quite freely and at her ease, and that the place in which she was had expanded into a great place like a gallery in a palace, instead of the room next her own into which she had walked a few minutes ago; but this discovery did not at all affect her mind, or occupy her except with the most passing momentary surprise.

“The fact is, I feel a great deal better and stronger,” she said.

“Quite well, Mary, and stronger than ever you were before?”

“Who is it that calls me Mary?  I have had nobody for a long time to call me Mary; the friends of my youth are all dead.  I think that you must be right, although the doctor, I feel sure, thought me very bad last night.  I should have got alarmed if I had not fallen asleep again.”

“And then woke up well?”

“Quite well:  it is wonderful, but quite true.  You seem to know a great deal about me.”

“I know everything about you.  You have had a very pleasant life, and do you think you have made the best of it?  Your old age has been very pleasant.”

“Ah! you acknowledge that I am old, then?” cried Lady Mary with a smile.

“You are old no longer, and you are a great lady no longer.  Don’t you see that something has happened to you?  It is seldom that such a great change happens without being found out.”

“Yes; it is true I have got better all at once.  I feel an extraordinary renewal of strength.  I seem to have left home without knowing it; none of my people seem near me.  I feel very much as if I had just awakened from a long dream.  Is it possible,” she said, with a wondering look, “that I have dreamed all my life, and after all am just a girl at home?” The idea was ludicrous, and she laughed.  “You see I am very much improved indeed,” she said.

She was still so far from perceiving the real situation, that some one came towards her out of the group of people about—­some one whom she recognized—­with the evident intention of explaining to her how it was.  She started a little at the sight of him, and held out her hand, and cried:  “You here!  I am very glad to see you—­doubly glad, since I was told a few days ago that you had—­died.”

There was something in this word as she herself pronounced it that troubled her a little.  She had never been one of those who are afraid of death.  On the contrary, she had always taken a great interest in it, and liked to hear everything that could be told her on the subject.  It gave her now, however, a curious little thrill of sensation, which she did not understand:  she hoped it was not superstition.

“You have guessed rightly,” he said, “quite right.  That is one of the words with a false meaning, which is to us a mere symbol of something we cannot understand.  But you see what it means now.”