sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."

She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.

"It is grateful," said she with a placid smile. "Methinks it is
like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not
what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a
feverish thirst that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest,
let me sleep. My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like
the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset."

She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it
required almost more energy than she could command to pronounce
the faint and lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered
through her lips ere she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her
side, watching her aspect with the emotions proper to a man the
whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to
be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, was the philosophic
investigation characteristic of the man of science. Not the
minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the cheek, a
slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly
perceptible tremor through the frame,--such were the details
which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume.
Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of
that volume, but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon
the last.

While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal
hand, and not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and
unaccountable impulse he pressed it with his lips. His spirit