rescues in the terrible Polar seas.

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