They forget death, Basil; they forget death in New York." "Well, I don't know that I've ever found much advantage in remembering it." "Don't say such a thing, dearest." He could see that she had got to the end of her nervous strength for the present, and he proposed that they should take the Elevated road as far as it would carry them into the country, and shake off their nightmare of flat-hunting for an hour or two; but her conscience would not let her.

She convicted him of levity equal to that of the New-Yorkers in proposing such a thing; and they dragged through the day.

She was too tired to care for dinner, and in the night she had a dream from which she woke herself with a cry that roused him, too.

It was something about the children at first, whom they had talked of wistfully before falling asleep, and then it was of a hideous thing with two square eyes and a series of sections growing darker and then lighter, till the tail of the monstrous articulate was quite luminous again.

She shuddered at the vague description she was able to give; but he asked, "Did it offer to bite you ?" "No.