Yes, the man I had murdered had been with me, had spoken to me, and the impression was that of rest, of calm, of some aching self-reproach being appeased.

“Just a dream, of course,” I said to myself; “but how odd that I cannot remember at all what he said.”  An hour perhaps passed by while I lay quiet, strangely comforted by the dream I had forgotten; and then I lapsed back into sleep and again Hop Lee was with me, speaking, telling me something earnestly, exhorting me gently, and again I woke with a feeling of gratitude, of peace; but I could recall nothing of what had been said to me.

The light burned steadily beside me, and I sat up and thought.

The feeling of tranquillity that spread through me, so different from the feverish self-reproach that had gripped me ever since I had killed Hop Lee was so marked, so wonderful in its effect on me that I could not feel it was the result of a dream.  No, the spirit of the old man had been there, absolving me of my broken word, absolving me of his murder.  The fact that I could not remember, could not recall or understand when awake my dream or his words, seemed to shew that in sleep a mysterious message from a hidden source had been conveyed to me, which, from its nature and the nature of my ordinary material brain, could not be received by the latter.  From that hour I began to get well rapidly.  Often and often in the long nights or the lonely quiet days, I tried to call up a dream to me, a vision of either of them again; often I longed to speak to Suzee once more.  But never again did any shade come to my pillow.  He had come that once, of that I was convinced.  To others it would always seem as if I had dreamed that night.  I knew, by some inner sense, I had been spoken to by the soul of the old dead Chinaman, and forgiven.

The time passed evenly in that calm solitude.  Sometimes still I was burnt with fever and racked with pain and got but poor food, and often longed for a hand to give me water in the dark nights.  And I longed—­ah, how I desired, infinitely, to send to Viola, tell her, and ask her to come to me!

I felt she would come then, that she would fly to me once she heard I was ill, in actual need of her.

But my pride refused to let me do this.

I had begged her to come in the name of our love, appealed to her through our passion.  I would never appeal to her pity.

Besides, I could not bear that she should see me now, wrecked in strength, a shadow, a skeleton of myself.

Fever had reduced me to the last thin edge of existence.  As I stretched out my arms before me, they looked like some grim ghastly stranger’s, I did not recognise them.  No, she should come back to me when I had regained the full glory of my health and strength that I knew she delighted in.

So I waited with all the patience I could command, and sleep and Nature nursed me between them till I was quite well.