him in like manner was repulsive to him, and be recoiled from it as from the thought of sacrilege. But hair could he rid himself of the lovely incubus? It was possible that the men who had brought it might be bribed to take it back again, and if they should refuse—but he was incapable of distinct thought upon the subject, and could only determine that in any case the beautiful thing before him should be treated with reverence and respect He gently covered it from head to foot with a long white cloth, and locking the door of communication between his bedroom and the room in which it lay, threw himself upon his bed without undressing, for the night was nearly gone.
But his sleep was broken, and his dreams were feverish, and in some way all connected with what lay in the next room. Now it seemed to him that it glided in through the locked door, with hands folded on its breast, and eyes still fast closed, and stood by his bedside; and now the dream was that he had opened a vein in one of the delicate arms, and that warm, living blood poured fast from it; and finally, he woke with a cry of horror from a ghastly dream that he had entered the room, and found that some unknown hand had anticipated him in the work of dissection.
The horror was upon him after he woke to know it was a dream, and opening the door he looked in upon the table. No change there of any kind. The long sheeted figure lay in the half light of dawn as he had seen it in the lamplight, very straight and still.
It was not until nearly noon that Astley raised the covering to look once again upon the beautiful dead face, and when he did so he saw with wonder, not unmixed with terror, that a change had come upon it. He could not tell what it might be; the deathly pallor was there still, but in some way the face was not the same. He looked into it long and curiously. Surely a change had passed over the eyes, for though they were still fast shut, they looked now as though closed in sleep rather than in death. He lifted an eyelid tenderly with his finger; there was not death in the eye; unconsciousness, trance, there might be, but not death.
He was certain now that she was not dead, though he could find no life in her pulses. For hours he strove to call back the spirit, until at length colour returned, and warmth, and life, and she lay before him sleeping tranquilly like a child. He had placed her on his bed, and now sat by her side with a throbbing heart to await her awakening.
She slept so long, and in the waning light looked so pale, that he feared she was again about to fall into the strange deathly trance from which he had with so much difficulty covered her. In his terror of that he cried out for her to awake, and the sound of his cry awoke her with a start.
He had prepared a speech that was to calm and re-assure her when she woke bewildered to find herself so strangely clothed and lodged; but she no more needed calming and re-assuring than an infant too young to know its mother from any other woman. She looked round with a wondering gaze that was almost infantine, and her eye resting upon Astley, she sat up in the bed and asked him in his own language for food. It was evident that she had no recollection of illness, and neither anxiety nor curiosity as to her present position.
She ate the food which was brought to her with appetite, and would have risen from the bed apparently unconscious that she wore no garment but a shroud, had not Astley persuaded her to lie down and sleep again.
He left her sleeping, and went to another room profoundly puzzled. Here was this beautiful woman, ignorant, and almost helpless as a child, thrown upon him for protection, as it was clear that she did not remember anything which would lead to the discovery of her friends. It was possible that her senses had left her altogether, never to return; the lovely creature might be a harmless idiot all the rest of her days. Her speaking English was another puzzle. She might be an Englishwoman—her beauty was certainly of the Saxon type—or she might only have learnt the English language; but if so, how came that knowledge to have been retained when all else seemed gone?
His perplexity was interrupted by the entrance of the cause of it. She stood at the door wrapt round in one of the bed coverings, looking at him with a sweet, childish, vacant expression, that was touching in its helplessness. “I must call her something,” he thought, as she stood apparently waiting for him to speak, “her name shall be Mary.”
“Are you better, Mary, and will you sit in this chair?”
She paid no attention to the inquiry, but took the offered seat, and began silently rocking herself to and fro. It had such a ghostly effect to see her there by the lamplight, robed in the long white drapery, with her beautiful face still pale, though no longer deathly, rocking herself in silence, that Astley felt a sensation very like fear thrill through him. He must do something, for he could not bear this. He took up a book, the first that came to hand—it was an English one—and offered it to her, asking if she would like to read.
She took it with a childlike smile, and laying