Her other hand moved toward her side in reply.  Every thing indicated pleurisy—­such that there was no longer room for gentle measures.  She must be relieved at once:  he must open a vein.  In the changed practice of later days, it had seldom fallen to the lot of Faber to perform the very simple operation of venesection, but that had little to do with the trembling of the hands which annoyed him with himself, when he proceeded to undo a sleeve of his patient’s nightdress.  Finding no button, he took a pair of scissors from his pocket, cut ruthlessly through linen and lace, and rolled back the sleeve.  It disclosed an arm the sight of which would have made a sculptor rejoice as over some marbles of old Greece.  I can not describe it, and if I could, for very love and reverence I would rather let it alone.  Faber felt his heart rise in his throat at the necessity of breaking that exquisite surface with even such an insignificant breach and blemish as the shining steel betwixt his forefinger and thumb must occasion.  But a slight tremble of the hand he held acknowledged the intruding sharpness, and then the red parabola rose from the golden bowl.  He stroked the lovely arm to help its flow, and soon the girl once more opened her eyes and looked at him.  Already her breathing was easier.  But presently her eyes began to glaze with approaching faintness, and he put his thumb on the wound.  She smiled and closed them.  He bound up her arm, laid it gently by her side, gave her something to drink, and sat down.  He sat until he saw her sunk in a quiet, gentle sleep:  ease had dethroned pain, and order had begun to dawn out of threatened chaos.

“Thank God!” he said, involuntarily, and stood up:  what all that meant, God only knows.

After various directions to Mrs. Puckridge, to which she seemed to attend, but which, being as simple as necessary, I fear she forgot the moment they were uttered, the doctor mounted, and rode away.  The darkness was gone, for the moon was rising, but when the road compelled him to face her, she blinded him nearly as much.  Slowly she rose through a sky freckled with wavelets of cloud, and as she crept up amongst them she brought them all out, in bluish, pearly, and opaline gray.  Then, suddenly almost, as it seemed, she left them, and walked up aloft, drawing a thin veil around her as she ascended.  All was so soft, so sleepy, so vague, it seemed to Paul as he rode slowly along, himself almost asleep, as if the Night had lost the blood he had caused to flow, and the sweet exhaustion that followed had from the lady’s brain wandered out over Nature herself, as she sank, a lovelier Katadyomene, into the hushed sea of pain-won repose.

Was he in love with her?  I do not know.  I could tell, if I knew what being in love is.  I think no two loves were ever the same since the creation of the world.  I know that something had passed from her eyes to his—­but what?  He may have been in love with her already; but ere long my reader may be more sure than I that he was not.  The Maker of men alone understands His awful mystery between the man and the woman.  But without it, frightful indeed as are some of its results, assuredly the world He has made would burst its binding rings and fly asunder in shards, leaving His spirit nothing to enter, no time to work His lovely will.