sleep without much terror, for I had told my maid to sleep in my
dressing-room. But I suppose the storm and the story I had told you
had unsettled my nerves, for I soon began to dream a horrid dream.
I thought I was dead once more. I could feel the horrible chill and
pain, the close-packed ice about me. I was dead, but yet there was a
spirit within me. I could feel it whispering to itself, although it
had not as yet spread its fire through me and awakened me into life.
It whispered that it was tired, and disheartened, and disappointed,
and wanted rest; that it had been on a long, fruitless journey, and
was so weary that it would not take up the burden of life again just
yet. But its rest could not be long; there was someone it must find,
and before he had gone again to that boundless land, whose haunting
spirits were impalpable as flecks of mist. And then it moaned and
wept, and seemed to live over its past, and I went back with it, or
I was one with it--I cannot define. It recalled many scenes, but
only one made an impression on my memory; I can recall no other." She
paused abruptly, but Dartmouth made no comment; he stood motionless
in breathless expectancy. She put her hand to her head, and after a
moment continued haltingly:

"I--oh--I hardly know how to tell it. I seemed to be standing with
you in a room more familiar to me than any room in this castle; a room
full of tapestries and skins and cushions and couches; a room which
if I had seen it in a picture I should have recognized as Oriental,
although I have never seen an Oriental room. I have always had an
indescribable longing to see Constantinople, and it seemed to me in
that dream as if I had but to walk to the window and look down upon
it--as if I had looked down upon it many times and loved its beauty.
But although I was with you, and your arms were about me, we were not
as we are now--as we were before the dream: we had suffered all that a