seemed locked in a profound swoon.

I left the room,--the house,--paused by Waby; he was still sleeping.
"Awake!" I said, and touched him with the wand. He started up at once,
rubbed his eyes, began stammering out excuses. I checked them, and bade
him follow me. I took the way up the open ground towards which Margrave
had pointed the wand, and there, motionless, beside a gnarled fantastic
thorn-tree, stood Lilian. Her arms were folded across her breast; her
face, seen by the moonlight, looked so innocent and so infantine, that I
needed no other evidence to tell me how unconscious she was of the peril
to which her steps had been drawn. I took her gently by the hand. "Come
with me," I said in a whisper, and she obeyed me silently, and with a
placid smile.

Rough though the way, she seemed unconscious of fatigue. I placed her
arm in mine, but she did not lean on it. We got back to the town. I
obtained there an old chaise and a pair of horses. At morning Lilian
was under her mother's roof. About the noon of that day fever seized
her; she became rapidly worse, and, to all appearance, in imminent
danger. Delirium set in; I watched beside her night and day,
supported by an inward conviction of her recovery, but tortured by
the sight of her sufferings. On the third day a change for the better
became visible; her sleep was calm, her breathing regular.

Shortly afterwards she woke out of danger. Her eyes fell at once on me,
with all their old ineffable tender sweetness.

"Oh, Allen, beloved, have I not been very ill? But I am almost well now.
Do not weep; I shall live for you,--for your sake." And she bent forward,
drawing my hand from my streaming eyes, and kissed me with a child's