Unwillingly, Mrs. Crayford puts her book aside, and opens the piano—­Mozart’s “Air in A, with Variations,” lies open on the instrument.  One after another she plays the lovely melodies, so simply, so purely beautiful, of that unpretending and unrivaled work.  At the close of the ninth Variation (Clara’s favorite), she pauses, and turns toward the garden.

“Shall I stop there?” she asks.

There is no answer.  Has Clara wandered away out of hearing of the music that she loves—­the music that harmonizes so subtly with the tender beauty of the night?  Mrs. Crayford rises and advances to the window.

No! there is the white figure standing alone on the slope of the lawn—­the head turned away from the house; the face looking out over the calm sea, whose gently rippling waters end in the dim line on the horizon which is the line of the Hampshire coast.

Mrs. Crayford advances as far as the path before the window, and calls to her.

“Clara!”

Again there is no answer.  The white figure still stands immovably in its place.

With signs of distress in her face, but with no appearance of alarm, Mrs. Crayford returns to the room.  Her own sad experience tells her what has happened.  She summons the servants and directs them to wait in the drawing-room until she calls to them.  This done, she returns to the garden, and approaches the mysterious figure on the lawn.

Dead to the outer world, as if she lay already in her grave—­insensible to touch, insensible to sound, motionless as stone, cold as stone—­Clara stands on the moonlit lawn, facing the seaward view.  Mrs. Crayford waits at her side, patiently watching for the change which she knows is to come.  “Catalepsy,” as some call it—­“hysteria,” as others say—­this alone is certain, the same interval always passes; the same change always appears.

It comes now.  Not a change in her eyes; they still remain wide open, fixed and glassy.  The first movement is a movement of her hands.  They rise slowly from her side and waver in the air like the hands of a person groping in the dark.  Another interval, and the movement spreads to her lips:  they part and tremble.  A few minutes more, and words begin to drop, one by one, from those parted lips—­words spoken in a lost, vacant tone, as if she is talking in her sleep.

Mrs. Crayford looks back at the house.  Sad experience makes her suspicious of the servants’ curiosity.  Sad experience has long since warned her that the servants are not to be trusted within hearing of the wild words which Clara speaks in the trance.  Has any one of them ventured into the garden?  No.  They are out of hearing at the window, waiting for the signal which tells them that their help is needed.

Turning toward Clara once more, Mrs. Crayford hears the vacantly uttered words, falling faster and faster from her lips,

“Frank!  Frank!  Frank!  Don’t drop behind—­don’t trust Richard Wardour.  While you can stand, keep with the other men, Frank!”