glimmer of the lance-heads and the flutter of the rippled banners that
streamed out from them, swept past me, and were gone, and they seemed
like a pageant in a dream, whose meaning we know not; and those sounds
too, the trumpets, and the clink of the mail, and the thunder of the
horse-hoofs, they seemed dream-like too--and it was all like a dream that
he should leave me, for we had said that we should always be together;
but he went away, and now he is come back again.

We were by his bed-side, Margaret and I; I stood and leaned over him, and
my hair fell sideways over my face and touched his face; Margaret kneeled
beside me, quivering in every limb, not with pain, I think, but rather
shaken by a passion of earnest prayer. After some time (I know not how
long), I looked up from his face to the window underneath which he lay; I
do not know what time of the day it was, but I know that it was a
glorious autumn day, a day soft with melting, golden haze: a vine and a
rose grew together, and trailed half across the window, so that I could
not see much of the beautiful blue sky, and nothing of town or country
beyond; the vine leaves were touched with red here and there, and three
over-blown roses, light pink roses, hung amongst them. I remember
dwelling on the strange lines the autumn had made in red on one of the
gold-green vine leaves, and watching one leaf of one of the over-blown
roses, expecting it to fall every minute; but as I gazed, and felt
disappointed that the rose leaf had not fallen yet, I felt my pain
suddenly shoot through me, and I remembered what I had lost; and then
came bitter, bitter dreams,--dreams which had once made me happy,--dreams
of the things I had hoped would be, of the things that would never be
now; they came between the fair vine leaves and rose blossoms, and that
which lay before the window; they came as before, perfect in colour and
form, sweet sounds and shapes. But now in every one was something
unutterably miserable; they would not go away, they put out the steady