before I saw the kind physician standing at the threshold of my chamber.
He pressed his finger to his lip, and made me a sign to follow him. I
obeyed, with noiseless tread and stifled breathing. He awaited me in the
garden under the flowering acacias, passed his arm in mine, and drew me
into the open pasture-land.

"Compose yourself," he then said; "I bring you tidings both of gladness
and of fear. Your Lilian's mind is restored: even the memories which had
been swept away by the fever that followed her return to her home in L----
are returning, though as yet indistinct. She yearns to see you, to bless
you for all your noble devotion, your generous, greathearted love; but I
forbid such interview now. If, in a few hours, she become either
decidedly stronger or decidedly more enfeebled, you shall be summoned to
her side. Even if you are condemned to a loss for which the sole
consolation must be placed in the life hereafter, you shall have, at
least, the last mortal commune of soul with soul. Courage! courage! You
are man! Bear as man what you have so often bid other men submit to
endure."

I had flung myself on the ground,--writhing worm that had no home but on
earth! Man, indeed! Man! All, at that moment, I took from manhood was
its acute sensibility to love and to anguish!

But after all such paroxysms of mortal pain, there comes a strange lull.
Thought itself halts, like the still hush of water between two descending
torrents. I rose in a calm, which Faber might well mistake for fortitude.

"Well," I said quietly, "fulfil your promise. If Lilian is to pass away
from me, I shall see her, at least, again; no wall, you tell me, between
our minds; mind to mind once more,--once more!"