So we kept our watch together in silence.  One of us absorbed in his writing; the other absorbed in her love.

Hour after hour he lay in his deep sleep.  The light of the new day grew and grew in the room, and still he never moved.

Towards six o’clock, I felt the warning which told me that my pains were coming back.  I was obliged to leave her alone with him for a little while.  I said I would go up-stairs, and fetch another pillow for him out of his room.  It was not a long attack, this time.  In a little while I was able to venture back, and let her see me again.

I found her at the head of the sofa, when I returned.  She was just touching his forehead with her lips.  I shook my head as soberly as I could, and pointed to her chair.  She looked back at me with a bright smile, and a charming colour in her face.  “You would have done it,” she whispered, “in my place!”

* * * * *

It is just eight o’clock.  He is beginning to move for the first time.

Miss Verinder is kneeling by the side of the sofa.  She has so placed herself that when his eyes first open, they must open on her face.

Shall I leave them together?

Yes!

* * * * *

Eleven o’clock.—­The house is empty again.  They have arranged it among themselves; they have all gone to London by the ten o’clock train.  My brief dream of happiness is over.  I have awakened again to the realities of my friendless and lonely life.

I dare not trust myself to write down, the kind words that have been said to me especially by Miss Verinder and Mr. Blake.  Besides, it is needless.  Those words will come back to me in my solitary hours, and will help me through what is left of the end of my life.  Mr. Blake is to write, and tell me what happens in London.  Miss Verinder is to return to Yorkshire in the autumn (for her marriage, no doubt); and I am to take a holiday, and be a guest in the house.  Oh me, how I felt, as the grateful happiness looked at me out of her eyes, and the warm pressure of her hand said, “This is your doing!”

My poor patients are waiting for me.  Back again, this morning, to the old routine!  Back again, to-night, to the dreadful alternative between the opium and the pain!

God be praised for His mercy!  I have seen a little sunshine—­I have had a happy time.

FIFTH NARRATIVE

The Story Resumed by Franklin Blake

CHAPTER I

But few words are needed, on my part, to complete the narrative that has been presented in the Journal of Ezra Jennings.

Of myself, I have only to say that I awoke on the morning of the twenty-sixth, perfectly ignorant of all that I had said and done under the influence of the opium—­from the time when the drug first laid its hold on me, to the time when I opened my eyes, in Rachel’s sitting-room.