That night various changes were made at Tallyn.  Diana’s maid unpacked, in the room communicating with Marsham’s; and Diana, pale and composed, made a new arrangement with Oliver’s male nurse.  She was to take the nursing of the first part of the night, and he was to relieve her at three in the morning.  To her would fall the administration of the new medicine.

* * * * *

At eleven o’clock all was still in the house.  Diana opened the door of Oliver’s room with a beating heart.  She wore a dressing-gown of some white stuff; her black hair, released from the combs of the day, was loosely rolled up, and curled round her neck and temples.  She came in with a gentle deliberate step; it was but a few hours since the ceremony of the morning, but the tranformation in her was instinctive and complete.  To-night she was the wife—­alone with her husband.

She saw that he was not asleep, and she went and knelt down beside him.

“Oliver, darling!”

He passed his hand over her hair.

“I have been waiting for you—­it is our wedding night.”

She hid her face against him.

“Oh! you angel!” he murmured to her—­“angel of consolation!  When I am gone, say to yourself:  ’I drew him out of the pit, and helped him to die’; say ‘he suffered, and I forgave him everything’; say ’he was my husband, and I carried him on my heart—­so.’” He moved toward her.  She put her arms under his head and drew him to her breast, stooping over him and kissing him.

So the first part of the night went by, he very much under the influence of morphia and not in pain; murmured words passing at intervals between them, the outward signs of an inward and ineffable bond.  Often, as she sat motionless beside him, the thought of her mother stirred in her heart—­father, mother, husband—­close, close all of them—­“closer than hands and feet”—­one with her and one with God.

About two o’clock she gave him the new drug, he piteously consenting for her sake.  Then in a mortal terror she resumed her place beside him.  In a few minutes surely the pain, the leaping hungry pain would be upon him, and she must see him wrestle with it defenceless.  She sat holding her breath, all existence gathered into fear.

But the minutes passed.  She felt the tension of his hand relax.  He went to sleep so gently that in her infinite relief she too dropped into sleep, her head beside his, the black hair mingling with the gray on the same pillow.

The servant coming in, as he had been told, looked at them in astonishment, and stole away again.

An hour or so later Oliver woke.

“I have had no morphia, and I am not in pain.  My God! what does it mean?”

Trembling, he put out his hand.  Yes!—­Diana was there—­asleep in her chair.  His wife!

His touch roused her, and as she bent over him he saw her dimly in the dim light—­her black hair, her white dress.