“Would you call Miss Drake?” he said.

Polwarth went, and following Dorothy up the stair again, heard what Faber said.

“She is sleeping beautifully, but I dare not leave her.  I must sit up with her to-night.  Send my man to tell my assistant that I shall not be home.  Could you let me have something to eat, and you take my place?  And there is Polwarth! he has earned his dinner, if any one has.  I do believe we owe the poor lady’s life to him.”

Dorothy ran to give the message and her own orders.  Polwarth begged she would tell the groom to say to Ruth as he passed that all was well; and when the meal was ready, joined Faber.

It was speedily over, for the doctor seemed anxious to be again with his patient.  Then Dorothy went to Polwarth.  Both were full of the same question:  had Faber recognized his wife or not?  Neither had come to a certain conclusion.  Dorothy thought he had, but that he was too hard and proud to show it; Polwarth thought he had not, but had been powerfully reminded of her.  He had been talking strangely, he said, during their dinner, and had drunk a good deal of wine in a hurried way.

Polwarth’s conclusion was correct:  it was with an excitement almost insane, and a pleasure the more sorrowful that he was aware of its transientness, a pleasure now mingling, now alternating with utter despair, that Faber returned to sit in the darkened chamber, watching the woman who with such sweet torture reminded him of her whom he had lost.  What a strange, unfathomable thing is the pleasure given us by a likeness!  It is one of the mysteries of our humanity.  Now she had seemed more, now less like his Juliet; but all the time he could see her at best only very partially.  Ever since his fall, his sight had been weak, especially in twilight, and even when, once or twice, he stood over her as she slept, and strained his eyes to their utmost, he could not tell what he saw.  For, in the hope that, by the time it did come, its way would have been prepared by a host of foregone thoughts, Dorothy had schemed to delay as much as she could the discovery which she trusted in her heart must come at last; and had therefore contrived, not by drawn curtains merely, but by closed Venetian shutters as well, to darken the room greatly.  And now he had no light but a small lamp, with a shade.

He had taken a book with him, but it was little he read that night.  At almost regular intervals he rose to see how his patient fared.  She was still floating in the twilight shallows of death, whether softly drifting on the ebb-tide of sleep, out into the open sea, or, on its flow, again up the river of life, he could not yet tell.  Once the nurse entered the room to see if any thing were wanted.  Faber lifted his head, and motioned her angrily away, making no ghost of a sound.  The night wore on, and still she slept.  In his sleepless and bloodless brain strangest thoughts and feelings went and came.