raised, for I felt feverish: you stood ten minutes with him on the steps: I heard your discourse, every word, and I heard the salute. Henry, give me some water."
"Let me give it him."
But he half rose to take the glass from young Sympson, and declined her attendance.
"And can I do nothing?"
"Nothing; for you cannot guarantee me a night's peaceful rest, and it is all I at present want."
"You do not sleep well?"
"Sleep has left me."
"Yet you said you were not very ill?"
"I am often sleepless when in high health."
"If I had power, I would lap you in the most placid slumber; quite deep and hushed, without a dream."
"Blank annihilation! I do not ask that."
"With dreams of all you most desire."
"Monstrous delusions! The sleep would be delirium, the waking, death."
"Your wishes are not so chimerical: you are no visionary?"
"Miss Keeldar, I suppose you think so; but my character is not, perhaps, quite as legible to you as a page of the last new novel might be."
"That is possible . . . . But this sleep: I should like to woo it to your pillow—to win for you its favour. If I took a book and sat down, and read some pages? I can well spare half an hour."
