ering, and turned away, but it
yielded to my hand, and advancing with uncertain steps through the
hall, I entered one of the apartments opening from it. Throwing myself
into a chair, I covered my burning eyeballs with my hands to shut out
the horror of strangeness. My mental confusion was so intense as to
produce actual nausea. The anguish of those moments, during which my
brain seemed melting, or the abjectness of my sense of helplessness,
how can I describe? In my despair I groaned aloud. I began to feel
that unless some help should come I was about to lose my mind. And
just then it did come. I heard the rustle of drapery, and looked up.
Edith Leete was standing before me. Her beautiful face was full of the
most poignant sympathy.

"Oh, what is the matter, Mr. West?" she said. "I was here when you
came in. I saw how dreadfully distressed you looked, and when I heard
you groan, I could not keep silent. What has happened to you? Where
have you been? Can't I do something for you?"

Perhaps she involuntarily held out her hands in a gesture of
compassion as she spoke. At any rate I had caught them in my own and
was clinging to them with an impulse as instinctive as that which
prompts the drowning man to seize upon and cling to the rope which is
thrown him as he sinks for the last time. As I looked up into her
compassionate face and her eyes moist with pity, my brain ceased to
whirl. The tender human sympathy which thrilled in the soft pressure
of her fingers had brought me the support I needed. Its effect to calm
and soothe was like that of some wonder-working elixir.

"God bless you," I said, after a few moments. "He must have sent you
to me just now. I think I was in danger of going crazy if you had not
come." At this the tears came into her eyes.

"Oh, Mr. West!" she cried. "How heartless you must have thought us!
How could we leave you to yourself so long! But it is over now, is it
not? You are better, surely."

"Yes," I said, "thanks to you. If you will not go away quite yet, I
shall be myself soon."

"Indeed I will not go away," she said, with a little quiver of her
face, more expressive of her sympathy than a volume of words. "You
must not think us so heartless as we seemed in leaving you so by
yourself. I scarcely slept last night, for thinking how strange your
waking would be this morning; but father said you would sleep till
late. He said that it would be better not to show too much sympathy
with you at f