er.
Yet either I must have spoken or (yes, the miracle was no less
likely!) she heard my thoughts; for she lifted her head and, rising,
came towards me. As she drew close, her form appeared to expand,
shutting out the light . . . and I drifted back into darkness.

By-and-by the light glimmered again. I seemed to be rising to it,
this time, like a drowned man out of deep water; drowned, not
drowning, for I felt no struggle, but rather stood apart from my body
and watched it ascending, the arms held downwards, rigid, the palms
touching its thighs--until at the surface, on the top of a wave, my
will rejoined it and forced it to look. Then I knew that I had been
mistaken. The sky was there, deep as a well; and, as before, it
shone through an opening; and the opening had a rounded top like the
arch of a window; yet it was not a window. As before, my love sat
between me and the light, and the light shone through her. My bed
rocked a little under me, and for a while I fancied myself on board
the _Gauntlet_, laid in my bunk and listening to the rolling of her
loose ballast--until my ear distinguished and recognized the sound
for that of wheels, a low rumble through which a horse's footfall
plodded, beating time.

I was scarcely satisfied of this before the sound grew indistinct
again and became a murmur of voices. The arch that framed the
sunlight widened; the sky drew nearer, breaking into vivid separate
tinctures--orange, blood-red, sapphire-blue; and at the same time the
Princess receded and diminished in stature. . . . The frame was a
window again, and she a figure on a coloured pane, shining there in a
company of saints and angels. But her voice remained beside me,
speaking with another voice in a great emptiness.

The other voice--a man's--talked most of the while. I could not
follow what it said, but by-and-by caught a single word, "Milano";
and again two words, "The mountains" and yet again, but after an
interval, "The people are poor; they give nothing; from year's end to
year's end"--and the voice prolonged itself like an echo, repeating
the words until, as they died away, they seemed to measure out the
time.

"The more reason why _you_--" began the Princess's voice.
"There shall be spared one--a little one--for Our Lady."

But here I felt myself drifting off once more. I was as one afloat
in a whirlpool, now carried near to a straw and anon swept away as I
clutched at it.

The eddy brought me round