“One morning, I cannot tell you how long after, I awoke and found myself in a strange-looking room, filled with strange objects, not the least strange of which was the thing that seemed myself.  At first I looked with vague and motionless curiosity out of the Lethe from which my mind slowly emerged; painless, and at peace; listlessly questioning whether I was alive or dead,—­whether the limp weight lying in bed there was my body,—­the meaning of the silence and the closed curtains.  Then, with a succession of painful flashes, as if the pole of an electrical battery had been applied to my brain, memory returned,—­Margaret, Flora, Paris, delirium.  I next remember hearing myself groan aloud,—­then seeing Joseph at my side.  I tried to speak, but could not.  Upon my pillow was a glove, and he placed it against my cheek.  An indescribable, excruciating thrill shot through me; still I could not speak.  After that, came a relapse.  Like Mrs. Browning’s poet, I lay

    ’’Twixt gloom and gleam,
    With Death and Life at each extreme.’

“But one morning I was better.  I could talk.  Joseph bent over me, weeping for joy.

“‘The danger is past!’ he said.  ‘The doctors say you will get well!’

“‘Have I been so ill, then?’

“‘Ill?’ echoed Joseph.  ’Nobody thought you could live.  We all gave you up, except her;—­and she’——­

“‘She!’ I said,—­’is she here?’

“‘From the moment of her arrival,’ replied Joseph, ’she has never left you.  Oh, if you don’t thank God for her,’—­he lowered his voice,—­’and live all the rest of your life just to reward her, you are the most ungrateful wretch!  You would certainly have died but for her.  She has scarcely slept, till this morning, when they said you would recover.’

“Joseph paused.  Every word he spoke went down like a weight of lead into my soul.  I had, indeed, been conscious of a tender hand soothing my pillow, of a lovely form flitting through my dreams, of a breath and magnetic touch of love infusing warm, sweet life into me,—­but it had always seemed Margaret, never Flora.

“‘The glove?’ I asked.

“‘Here it is,’ said Joseph.  ’In your delirium you demanded it; you would not be without it; you caressed it, and addressed to it the tenderest apostrophes.’

“‘And Flora,—­she heard?’

“‘Flora?’ repeated Joseph.  ’Don’t you know—­haven’t you any idea—­what has happened?  It has been terrible!’

“‘Tell me at once!’ I said.  ‘Keep nothing back!’

“‘Immediately on her return from Marseilles,—­you remember that?’

“‘Yes, yes! go on!’

“’She established herself here.  Nobody could come between her and you; and a brave, true girl she proved herself.  Oh, but she was wild about you!  She offered the doctors extravagant sums—­she would have bribed Heaven itself, if she could—­not to let you die.  But there came a time,—­one night, when you were raving about Margaret,—­I tell you, it was terrible!  She would have the truth, and so I told her,—­everything, from the beginning.  It makes me shudder now to think of it,—­it struck her so like death!’