general practitioner Dr
Wait. Hot flannels, hot bottles, hot possets, and a bedroom fire were
exhibited, and when at nine o'clock Miss Joliffe kissed her niece and
retired for the night, she by no means despaired of the patient's speedy
recovery from so sudden and unaccountable an attack.

Anastasia was alone; what a relief to be alone again, though she felt
that such a thought was treasonable and unkind to the warm old heart
that had just left her, to that warm old heart which yearned so deeply
to her, but with which she had not shared her story! She was alone, and
she lay a little while in quiet content looking at the fire through the
iron bars at the foot of her bedstead. It was the first bedroom fire
she had had for two years, and she enjoyed the luxury with a pleasure
proportionate to its rarity. She was not sleepy, but grew gradually
more composed, and was able to reflect on the letter which she had
promised to write. It would be difficult, and she assured herself with
much vigour that it must raise insurmountable obstacles, that they were
obstacles which one in Lord Blandamer's position must admit to be quite
insurmountable. Yes, in this letter she would write the colophon of so
wondrous a romance, the epilogue of so amazing a tragedy. But it was
her conscience that demanded the sacrifice, and she took the more
pleasure in making it, because she felt at heart that the pound of flesh
might never really after all be cut.

How thoroughly do we enjoy these sacrifices to conscience, these
followings of honour's code severe, when we know that none will be mean
enough to take us at our word! To what easily-gained heights of
morality does it raise us to protest that we never could accept the gift
that will eventually be forced into our reluctant hands, to insist that
we regard as the shortest of loans the money which we never shall be
called upon to repay. It was something of the same sort with Anastasia.
She told herself that by her letter she would give the death-blow to
her love, and perhaps believed what she told, yet all the while kept
hope hidden at the bottom of the box, even as in the most real perils of
a dream we sometimes are supported by the sub-waking sense that we _are_
dreaming.

A little later Anastasia was sitting before her bedroom fire writing.
It has a magic of its own--the bedroom fire. Not such a one as night by
night warms hothouse bedrooms of the rich, but that which burns but once
or