woman wandered, till she came to a closed door in one of
the corridors. Here she paused, laid her right hand on the silver knob,
and turned it so noiselessly that, when the door opened, it seemed like
the action of a ghost.

The room was darkened from even the faint light of the stars by sweeping
draperies of silk, which glowed out redly as the lamp light fell upon it
in flashes, as if suddenly drenched with wine.

A high ebony bedstead stood in the centre of this noble room, canopied
half way over, and draped like the windows, so that a red gleam fell
upon the whiteness of the counterpane as the light of that lamp fell
upon it.

A man lay profoundly sleeping on this bed--a handsome, middle-aged man,
whose thick brown beard showed soft gleams of silver in it, and whose
hair, though waving and bright, was growing thin on the top of his head.

The man appeared to sleep heavily, and a smile lay on his lips; but a
look of habitual care had written itself on his forehead, and his mouth
was surrounded by stern, hard lines, that seemed graven there with
steel.

The woman stood by this sleeping man, gazing on him with the far-off
look of a ghost. She turned at last, and set the light down on a
console, where it fell less distinctly on the pillow where that head was
lying. Then she crept back and sat down on the side of the bed, so close
to the unconscious sleeper that her shadow fell across him. Slowly, as
if she had been touching a serpent, her hand crept stealthily toward
that which lay in the supine carelessness of sleep on the white
counterpane. She touched it at last, but started back. A blood-red stain
from the curtain fell across it as her bending form let the light stream
through the silk.

The woman drew back and passed her left hand quickly over that which had
touched the sleeping man. Again and again she rubbed one hand over the
other, muttering to herself.

Then a look of passionate distress came to that dark face, and, going to
a marble table, on which a silver bowl and pitcher stood, she poured
some water into the bowl, and plunged the hand with which she had
touched that sleeping man into it. The splash of the water aroused him,
and its icy coldness shocked the woman out of her unnatural sleep. She
turned around wildly, with the water dripping from her hands--turned to
find herself in her husband's chamber, with his astonished eyes fixed
upon her as he sat up in bed.

"Rachael!"

She did not answer hi