overtaxed, broke down, and she was ill for a while; although that did
not prevent our meeting as usual, and there was no perceptible
difference in her when we met. But I am certain that in reality she was
never quite the same again as she had been, and the dread possibility of
parting any day would come up oftener in our talk; in our minds, only
too often, and our minds were as one.

She knew that if I died first, everything I had brought into "Magna sed
Apta" (and little it was) would be there no more; even to my body, ever
lying supine on the couch by the enchanted window, it she had woke by
chance to our common life before I had, or remained after I had been
summoned away to my jail.

And I knew that, if she died, not only her body on the adjacent couch,
but all "Magna sed Apta" itself would melt away, and be as if it had
never been, with its endless galleries and gardens and magic windows,
and all the wonders it contained.

Sometimes I felt a hideous nervous dread, on sinking into sleep, lest I
should find it was so, and the ever-heavenly delight of waking there,
and finding all as usual, was but the keener. I would kneel by her
inanimate body, and gaze at her with a passion of love that seemed made
up of all the different kinds of love a human being can feel; even the
love of a dog for his mistress was in it, and that of a wild beast for
its young.

With eager, tremulous anxiety and aching suspense I would watch for the
first light breath from her lips, the first faint tinge of carmine in
her cheek, that always heralded her coming back to life. And when she
opened her eyes and smiled, and stretched her long young limbs in the