"Die, Una darling!--what can you mean?"

"Yes, sweet Alice, die, indeed. We must all die some time, you know,
or--or undergo a change; and my time is near--_very_ near--unless I
sleep apart from you."

"Indeed, Una, sweetheart, I think you _are_ ill, but not near death."

"Una knows what you think, wise Alice--but she's not mad--on the
contrary, she's wiser than other folks."

"She's sadder and stranger too," said Alice, tenderly.

"Knowledge is sorrow," answered Una, and she looked across the room
through her golden hair which she was combing--and through the window,
beyond which lay the tops of the great trees, and the still foliage of
the glen in the misty moonlight.

"'Tis enough, Alice dear; it must be so. The bed must move hence, or
Una's bed will be low enough ere long. See, it shan't be far though,
only into that small room."

She pointed to an inner room or closet opening from that in which they
lay. The walls of the building were hugely thick, and there were double
doors of oak between the chambers, and Alice thought, with a sigh, how
completely separated they were going to be.

However she offered no opposition. The change was made, and the girls
for the first time since childhood lay in separate chambers. A few
nights afterwards Alice awoke late in the night from a dreadful dream,