leaning up against her pillows, was reading comfortably
by the light of the candle close beside her. She was miles away from her
real surroundings, and driving with Fleda in England, and no other world
existed for her.

Her eyelids growing heavy, she closed them for a moment. She didn't know
that she had closed them, and imagined she was still reading. She was very
surprised, though, presently, to find that what she thought she had been
reading was not on the open pages before her. She rubbed her tiresomely
heavy lids and looked again; then she raised herself on her elbow and
began again at the top of the mysterious page, and all went well for a
paragraph or two. Fleda was walking now alone, through a grassy glade.
Oh, how lovely it was--but what a long walk to be taking in such a high
wind. Mona forced open one eye, and let the other rest a moment. "The
trees sometimes swept back, leaving an opening, and at other places,"
stretched--stretched, yes it was, "stretched their branches over,"--over
--but how the wind roared in the trees, and what a pity that someone
should have had a bonfire just there, the smell was suffocating--and the
heat! How could she bear it! And, oh, dear! How dazzling the sun was--
or the bonfire; the whole wood would be on fire if they did not take care!
Oh, the suffocating smoke!

Mona--or was she Fleda?--gasped and panted. If relief did--not--come
soon--she could not draw--another breath. She felt she was paralysed--
helpless--dying--and the wind--so much--air--somewhere--she was trying
to say, when suddenly, from very, very far away she heard her own name
being called. It sounded like 'Mona'--not Fleda--and--yet, somehow she
knew that it was she who was meant.

"Oh--what--do they--want!" she thought wearily. "I can't go. I'm----"

"Mona! Mona!" She heard it again; her own name, and called frantically,
and someone was shaking her, and saying something about a fire, and then
she seemed to be dragged up bodily and carried away. "Oh, what rest! and
how nice to be out of that awful heat--she would have--died--if--if--"
Then she felt the cold air blowing on her face, the dreadful dragging pain
in her chest was gone, she could breathe! She opened her eyes and looked
about her--and for the first time was sure that she was dreaming.

The other was real enough, but this could only be a dream, for she was
lying on the pavement in the street, in the middle of the night, with
people stand