Surely it
was time for her to follow the general example? With a certain
irritable nervous haste, she rose again and undressed herself. 'I have
lost two hours of rest,' she thought, frowning at the reflection of
herself in the glass, as she arranged her hair for the night. 'I shall
be good for nothing to-morrow!'

She lit the night-light, and extinguished the candles--with one
exception, which she removed to a little table, placed on the side of
the bed opposite to the side occupied by the arm-chair. Having put her
travelling-box of matches and the guide-book near the candle, in case
she might be sleepless and might want to read, she blew out the light,
and laid her head on the pillow.

The curtains of the bed were looped back to let the air pass freely
over her. Lying on her left side, with her face turned away from the
table, she could see the arm-chair by the dim night-light. It had a
chintz covering--representing large bunches of roses scattered over a
pale green ground. She tried to weary herself into drowsiness by
counting over and over again the bunches of roses that were visible
from her point of view. Twice her attention was distracted from the
counting, by sounds outside--by the clock chiming the half-hour past
twelve; and then again, by the fall of a pair of boots on the upper
floor, thrown out to be cleaned, with that barbarous disregard of the
comfort of others which is observable in humanity when it inhabits an
hotel. In the silence that followed these passing disturbances, Agnes
went on counting the roses on the arm-chair, more and more slowly.
Before long, she confused herself in the figures--tried to begin
counting again--thought she would wait a little first--felt her eyelids
drooping, and her head reclining lower and lower on the pillow--sighed
faintly--and sank into sleep.

How long that first sleep lasted, she never knew. She could only
remember, in the after-time, that she woke instantly.

Every faculty and perception in her passed the boundary line between
insensibility and consciousness, so to speak, at a leap. Without
knowing why, she sat up suddenly in the bed, listening for she knew not
what. Her head was in a whirl; her heart beat furiously, without any
assignable cause. But one trivial event had happened during the
interval while she had been asleep. The night-light had gone out; and
the room, as a matter of course, was in total darkness.

She felt for the match-box, and paused after