_Onu_.--Yes, I suppose, as long as you were ill.

_Phil_.--I will not allow you to treat me with ridicule on this point
till you have heard the second part of my tale. Ten years after I had
recovered from the fever, and when I had almost lost the recollection of
the vision, it was recalled to my memory by a very blooming and graceful
maiden, fourteen or fifteen years old, that I accidentally met during my
travels in Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression made upon my
mind by this female was very strong. Now comes the extraordinary part of
the narrative. Ten years after, twenty years after my first illness, at
a time when I was exceedingly weak from a severe and dangerous malady,
which for many weeks threatened my life, and when my mind was almost in a
desponding state, being in a course of travels ordered by my medical
advisers, I again met the person who was the representative of my
visionary female, and to her kindness and care I believe I owe what
remains to me of existence. My despondency gradually disappeared, and
though my health still continued weak, life began to possess charms for
me which I had thought were for ever gone; and I could not help
identifying the living angel with the vision which appeared as my
guardian genius during the illness of my youth.

_Onu_.--I really see nothing at all in this fact, whether the first or
the second part of the narrative be considered, beyond the influence of
an imagination excited by disease. From youth, even to age, women are
our guardian angels, our comforters; and I dare say any other handsome
young female, who had been your nurse in your last illness, would have
coincided with your remembrance of the vision, even though her eyes had
been hazel and her hair flaxen. Nothing can be more loose than the
images represented in dreams following a fever, and with the nervous