and it would
only distress you to feel that he was upset. Don't trouble about it,
darling. It will be all right."

Then Peggy shut her eyes and wandered away into a strange world, in
which accustomed things disappeared, and time was not, and nothing
remained but pain and weariness and mystery. Those of us who have come
near to death have visited this world too, and know the blackness of it,
and the weary waking.

Peggy lay in her little white bed, and heard voices speaking in her ear,
and saw strange shapes flit to and fro. Quite suddenly, as it appeared,
a face would be bending over her own, and as she watched it with languid
curiosity, wondering what manner of thing it could be, it would melt
away and vanish in the distance. At other times again it would grow
larger and larger, until it assumed gigantic proportions, and she cried
out in fear of the huge, saucer-like eyes. There was a weary puzzle in
her brain, an effort to understand, but everything seemed mixed up and
incomprehensible. She would look round the room and see the sunshine
peeping in through the chinks of the blinds, and when she closed her
eyes for a moment--just a single fleeting moment--lo! the gas was lit,
and someone was nodding in a chair by her side. And it was by no means
always the same room. She was tired, and wanted badly to rest, yet she
was always rushing about here, there, and everywhere, striving vainly to
dress herself in clothes which fell off as soon as they were fastened,
hurrying to catch a train to reach a certain destination; but in each
instance the end was the same--she was falling, falling, falling--always
falling--from the crag of an Alpine precipice, from the pinnacle of a
tower, from the top of a flight of stairs. The slip and the terror
pursued her wherever she went; she would shriek aloud, and feel soft
hands pressed on her cheeks, soft voices murmuring in her ear.

One vision stood out plainly from those nightmare dreams--the vision of
a face which suddenly appeared in the midst of the big grey cloud which
enveloped her on every side--a beautiful face which was strangely like,
and yet unlike, something she had seen long, long ago in a world which
she had well-nigh forgotten. It was pale and thin, and the golden hair
fell in a short curly crop on the blue garment which was swathed over
the shoulders. It was like one of the heads of celestial choir-boys
which she had seen on Christmas cards and in books of engra