Then followed an awkward pause, which I desperately broke by saying I
was afraid she was not better.

"Better! I was not ill," she answered, almost impatiently, and walked
away towards the other side of the room. I understood that she wished to
be alone, and was moving towards the door as quietly as possible when I
was suddenly checked by her hand upon my elbow.

"Mr. Lyndsay, why are you going? Was I rude? I did not mean to be.
Forgive me; I am so miserable."

"You could not be rude, I think, even if you wished to. It is I who am
inconsiderate in intruding--"

"You are not intruding; please stay."

"I would gladly stay if I could help you."

"Can any one help me, I wonder?" She went slowly back to the fire and
sat down upon the fender-stool, and resting her chin upon her hand, and
looking dreamily before her, repeated--

"Can any one help me, I wonder?"

I sat down on a chair near her and said--

"Do you think it would help you to talk of what has frightened you?"

"I don't think I can. I would tell you, Mr. Lyndsay, if I could tell any
one; for you know what it is to be weak and suffering; you are as
sympathetic as a woman, and more merciful than some women. But part of
the horror of it all is that I cannot explain it. Words seem to be no
good, just because I have used them so easily and so meaninglessly all
my life--just as words and nothing more."

"Can you tell me what you saw?"

"A face, only a face, when I woke up suddenly. It looked as if it were
painted on the darkness. But oh, the dreadfulness of it and what it
brought with it! Do you remember the line, 'Bring with you airs from
heaven or blasts from hell'? Yes, it was in hell, because hell is not a
great gulf, like Dante described, as I used to think; it is no place at
all--it is something we make ourselves. I felt all this as I saw the
face, for we ourselves are not what we think. Part of what I used to
play with was true enough; it is all Maya, a delusion, this
sense--life--it is no life at all. The actual life is behind, under it
all; it goes deep deep down, it stretches on, on--and yet it has nothing
to do with space or time. I feel as if I were beating myself against a
stone wall. My words can have no sense for you any more than they would
have had for me yesterday."

"But tell me, why should this discovery of this other life make you so
miserable?"

"Oh, because it brings such a want with it. How can I explain? It is
like a poor wretc