sleep, from which not even the many questions she fretted to put
to him seemed weighty enough to warrant his disturbance.

So when Lawford again opened his eyes he found himself lying wide
awake, clear and refreshed, and eager to get up. But upon the air
lay the still hush of early morning. He tried in vain to catch
back sleep again. A distant shred of dream still floated in his
mind, like a cloud at evening. He rarely dreamed, but certainly
something immensely interesting had but a moment ago eluded him.
He sat up and looked at the clear red cinders and their maze of
grottoes. He got out of bed and peeped through the blinds. To the
east and opposite to him gardens and an apple-orchard lay, and
there in strange liquid tranquillity hung the morning star, and
rose, rifling into the dusk of night, the first grey of dawn. The
street beneath its autumn leaves was vacant, charmed, deserted.

Hardly since childhood had Lawford seen the dawn unless over his
winter breakfast-table. Very much like a child now he stood
gazing out of his bow-window--the child whom Time's busy robins
had long ago covered over with the leaves of numberless hours. A
vague exultation fumed up into his brain. Still on the borders of
sleep, he unlocked the great wardrobe and took out an old faded
purple and crimson dressing-gown that had belonged to his
grandfather, the chief glory of every Christmas charade. He
pulled the cowl-like hood over his head and strode majestically
over to the looking-glass.

He looked in there a moment on the strange face, like a child
dismayed at its own excitement, and a fit of sobbing that was
half uncontrollable laughter swept over him. He threw off the