laughed to herself at the domestic comedy thus presented to her
mind.

At this period, either as a reaction from the light thrown, or
lighter thought upon her overwrought nature, or possibly from some
subtle, potent influence emanating from the censer burning near her,
Sarthia lapsed into sudden and most profound unconsciousness.

A few moments later--it seemed to Sarthia as if ages had
intervened--she began a fierce struggle to awake. "Why, how is
this?" she thought. She seemed enveloped in a dead wall of some
kind. The brain, the heart, the infinite ramification of nerves in
no way responded to her will and her utmost effort. Almost worn out
with the unequal battle it began to dawn upon her that she was
really endeavoring to animate the other body. "Am I becoming
Nu-nah?" Yes, in the excitement of the moment she raised herself
upon her couch and, resting upon her elbow, gazed upon the rigid
form of what a moment before had been herself.

But her movement had startled a form beside the couch, some one who
had approached, unobserved by Sarthia, during the interval of
unconsciousness.

A young man who seemed to her the most God-like being she had ever
beheld and perceiving her glance, with a low exclamation of joy,
sprang toward her, clasped her hand in his, and turning her face
upward, gazed with most passionate tenderness into her eyes.

"My Nu-nah, you will live," he murmured. "Do you know your
Rathunor?"