passionate names; and I lying so passive, faintly struggling to
remember, until my soul sank whirling in darkness, and I knew no more.

"One morning, I cannot tell you how long after, I awoke and found
myself in a strange-looking room, filled with strange objects, not the
least strange of which was the thing that seemed myself. At first I
looked with vague and motionless curiosity out of the Lethe from which
my mind slowly emerged; painless, and at peace; listlessly questioning
whether I was alive or dead,--whether the limp weight lying in bed
there was my body,--the meaning of the silence and the closed
curtains. Then, with a succession of painful flashes, as if the pole
of an electrical battery had been applied to my brain, memory
returned,--Margaret, Flora, Paris, delirium. I next remember hearing
myself groan aloud,--then seeing Joseph at my side. I tried to speak,
but could not. Upon my pillow was a glove, and he placed it against my
cheek. An indescribable, excruciating thrill shot through me; still I
could not speak. After that, came a relapse. Like Mrs. Browning's
poet, I lay


''Twixt gloom and gleam,
With Death and Life at each extreme.'


"But one morning I was better. I could talk. Joseph bent over me,
weeping for joy.

"'The danger is past!' he said. 'The doctors say you will get well!'

"'Have I been so ill, then?'