hears all we are saying, as well as the ticking of our watches and the beating of our hearts.”
In a breaking voice that was all but a whisper, I spoke again.
“Lucy!”
The sweet lips so softly closed opened gently, and the voice of my dear one came like the voice of one who speaks as she is sinking into a sleep.
“Yes.”
“Are you in pain?”
“Oh, no.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“Do you wish me to hold your hand?”
“Oh, yes.”
I lifted from the counterpane the thin, motionless fingers, and inclosed them in my moist and swelling palms.
“Are you happy now, dearest?”
“Quite happy.”
The doctor and the minister listened and looked on.
“She is exhausted—that's all,” said Godwin.
“Do you mean that she is not asleep?” said the hypnotist.
“Certainly I do.”
“Then arouse her. Make her sit up and talk to us in the common way of life.”
The doctor accepted the challenge promptly. He raised Lucy in his arms and spoke to her, but she dropped back as one without bodily power.
“Raise her eyelids. Look at the pupils,” said the hypnotist.
The doctor did so. “She is asleep,” he muttered.
“But only in the somnambulistic phase,” said the hypnotist.
Then he touched her eyebrows and her temples with a hard downward pressure. Her breathing became slower and less audible, her face settled to a serene expression, and a faint tinge of color rose to her cheeks.
“She is now in the deeper phase—she is in a trance,” said the hypnotist.
“You mean that she is unconscious?” said the doctor.
“Quite unconscious.”
“Lucy!” I cried again over the placid face, but there came no answer.
“Lucy! Lucy!”
There was not the quiver of an eyelid, not the shadow of movement on the lips. She was gone—gone to the great world of silence where the soul lives apart.
But I felt no fear now, no self reproach, no misgiving. It was impossible to look into that silent face and be afraid. Never had my dear one seemed to me so softly beautiful, so like a happy sleeping child, so like an angel still on earth and yet cut off from the jar and fret of life. Her bosom rose and fell with the gentlest motion. I had to listen hard to catch the sound of her slow breathing. Her heart beat regularly. She was at peace.
Oh, sleep it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole—
But would the experiment succeed? When my darling awoke from this sleep of the soul, would the burning thirst of the flesh be gone?
“How long does the crave usually last?” said the hypnotist.
“Three days,” answered Mrs. Hill, rising from a chair at the back, where she had been sitting with covered face.
“Three! This is Wednesday. Thursday—Friday—Saturday—then we shall waken her from her sleep on Sunday morning. And meantime I will stay here in the house and watch her.”
VII.
I left the hypnotist at Clousedale Hall, and went back to the Wheatsheaf. Not until then did I realize what the tension had been, and what it still must be. How I passed the four nights and days that followed I do not know. One creeping terror dominated every sleeping and waking hour—that Lucy would never come out of the trance into which our mysterious forces had laid her. I went up to the house constantly, and as often as I approached it I glanced nervously from the farthest point of sight to assure myself that the blinds had not been drawn down. I crept up stairs on tiptoe, and stole along the corridors like a thief. I know that short as the time of waiting was, measured in relation to life, I wasted away in it and grew pale and haggard. It ought to have reassured me, but hardly did, that meantime the hypnotist did not turn a hair. A smug content shone on his face as often as I looked at it with fearful eyes.
Lucy's condition continued good. Her pulse was regular, and her heart normal. She took nourishment in sustaining quantities, by the means they had of passing it through her almost motionless lips.
I had no thought to waste on the people of Cleator, but it was impossible not to know that in some way public opinion was against me. Even Mrs. Tyson, the landlady, at first so friendly a soul, was clearly looking at me askance. Suspicion, which
