unsolved by my reason. Distinctly I saw the Shadow,
but its light was far paler, its outline far more vague, than when I
had beheld it before. I took courage, as I felt Lilian's heart beating
against my own. I advanced, I crossed the threshold,--the Shadow was
gone.

"There is no Shadow here,--no phantom to daunt thee, my life's life,"
said I, bending over Lilian.

"It has touched me in passing; I feel it--cold, cold, cold!" she
answered faintly.

I bore her to her room, placed her on her bed, struck a light, watched
over her. At dawn there was a change in her face, and from that
time health gradually left her; strength slowly, slowly, yet to me
perceptibly, ebbed from her life away.

(1) A missile weapon peculiar to the Australian savages.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

Months upon months have rolled on since the night in which Lilian had
watched for my coming amidst the chilling airs--under the haunting moon.
I have said that from the date of that night her health began gradually
to fail, but in her mind there was evidently at work some slow
revolution. Her visionary abstractions were less frequent; when they
occurred, less prolonged. There was no longer in her soft face that
celestial serenity which spoke her content in her dreams, but often a
look of anxiety and trouble. She was even more silent than before; but
when she did speak, there were now evident some struggling gleams of
memory. She startled us, at times, by a distinct allusion to the
events and scenes of her early childhood. More than once she spoke
of commonplace incidents and mere acquaintances at L----. At last
she seemed to recognize Mrs. Ashleigh as her mother; but me, as Allen
Fenwick, her betrothed, her bridegroom, no! Once or twice she spoke
to me of her beloved as of a stranger to myself, and asked me not to
deceive her--should she ever see him again? There was one change in
this new phase of her state that wounded me to the quick. She had
always previously seemed to welcome my presence; now there were hours,
sometimes days together, in which my presence was evidently painful to
her. She would become agitated when I stole into her room, make signs to
me to leave her, grow yet more disturbed if I did not immediately obey,
and become calm again when I was gone.

Faber sought constantly to sustain my courage and administer to my hopes
by reminding me of the prediction he had hazarded,--namely, that through
some malady to the frame the reason would