“I wonder if there are many visitors at the hotel?  Taking our meals as we do in our rooms, we see but little of them.”

“There have been several arrivals to-day,” she answered.

“And there are more coming.  Sister, I feel strangely here.  The feeling has deepened ever since I came.  I feel a soul; some one near me; a being strong in soul and body, and more lovely than any one I have ever met.”

Marion looked distressed.  She feared his mind was wandering.  In vain she tried to hide her look of concern; he saw it, and relieved her fears by his words and manner.

“It is not mere fancy, nor mental illusion, my dear sister, but something real and tangible.  I feel it in my entire being:  some one is coming to make me whole.”

“A woman?”

“Yes; a woman such as you nor I have never looked upon.”

“You are weary now, Ralph; will you not lie down?”

“I will to please you; but I am far from being weary.”

She smoothed his pillow, and led him to the couch.  At that instant a carriage drove to the door, and several persons alighted.

Marion turned her gaze from the strangers to her brother.  Never in her life had she seen him look as he did then.  His eyes glowed, not with excitement, but with new life.  The color mounted to cheeks and forehead, while he kept pacing up and down the room, too full of joy and emotion to utter a single sentence.

“What is it, brother?”

This question, anxiously put, was all she could say, for she perceived, dimly, a sense of some approaching crisis.

Her anxious look touched him, and he threw himself on the couch, and permitted her to pass her hand gently over his brow.

“There; it’s over now.”

“What, Ralph?”

“The strange tremor of my being.  Marion, some one has come to this hotel, who will strangely affect my future life.”

“The woman,—­the soul you felt in the air?” she inquired, now excited in turn.

“Yes, the soul has come; my soul.  I shall look on her before to-morrow’s sun has set.  I feel an affiliation, a quality of life which never entered my mental or physical organization before.  And Marion, this quality is mine by all the laws of Heaven.”  He sank back upon the couch like a weary child, and soon passed into a sweet slumber.

Marion watched the color as it came into his face.  It was the flush of health, not the hectic tinge of disease; and his breath, once labored and short, was now easy and calm as an infant’s.

Some wondrous change seemed to have been wrought upon him.  What was it?  By what subtle process had his life blood been warmed, and his being so strongly affiliated with another life? and where was the being whose life had entered into his?  Beneath the same roof, reading the beautiful story of “Evangeline.”

The next morning Ralph arose, strong and refreshed, having slept much better than he had for many months.