was not yet in bed.  Still she hesitated; she was not quite certain of a divine direction; the voice that told her to go to Hetty seemed no stronger that the other voice which said that Hetty was weary, and that going to her now in an unseasonable moment would only tend to close her heart more obstinately.  Dinah was not satisfied without a more unmistakable guidance than those inward voices.  There was light enough for her, if she opened her Bible, to discern the text sufficiently to know what it would say to her.  She knew the physiognomy of every page, and could tell on what book she opened, sometimes on what chapter, without seeing title or number.  It was a small thick Bible, worn quite round at the edges.  Dinah laid it sideways on the window ledge, where the light was strongest, and then opened it with her forefinger.  The first words she looked at were those at the top of the left-hand page:  “And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul’s neck and kissed him.”  That was enough for Dinah; she had opened on that memorable parting at Ephesus, when Paul had felt bound to open his heart in a last exhortation and warning.  She hesitated no longer, but, opening her own door gently, went and tapped on Hetty’s.  We know she had to tap twice, because Hetty had to put out her candles and throw off her black lace scarf; but after the second tap the door was opened immediately.  Dinah said, “Will you let me come in, Hetty?” and Hetty, without speaking, for she was confused and vexed, opened the door wider and let her in.

What a strange contrast the two figures made, visible enough in that mingled twilight and moonlight!  Hetty, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glistening from her imaginary drama, her beautiful neck and arms bare, her hair hanging in a curly tangle down her back, and the baubles in her ears.  Dinah, covered with her long white dress, her pale face full of subdued emotion, almost like a lovely corpse into which the soul has returned charged with sublimer secrets and a sublimer love.  They were nearly of the same height; Dinah evidently a little the taller as she put her arm round Hetty’s waist and kissed her forehead.

“I knew you were not in bed, my dear,” she said, in her sweet clear voice, which was irritating to Hetty, mingling with her own peevish vexation like music with jangling chains, “for I heard you moving; and I longed to speak to you again to-night, for it is the last but one that I shall be here, and we don’t know what may happen to-morrow to keep us apart.  Shall I sit down with you while you do up your hair?”

“Oh yes,” said Hetty, hastily turning round and reaching the second chair in the room, glad that Dinah looked as if she did not notice her ear-rings.

Dinah sat down, and Hetty began to brush together her hair before twisting it up, doing it with that air of excessive indifference which belongs to confused self-consciousness.  But the expression of Dinah’s eyes gradually relieved her; they seemed unobservant of all details.