Emerson bent over and took one of her hands in his.
"Irene!" He called her name in a voice of the tenderest affection.
The sound seemed to penetrate to the region of consciousness, for her lips moved with a murmur of inarticulate words.

He kissed her, and said again-- "Irene!" There was a sudden lighting up of her face.
"Irene, love! darling!" The voice of Emerson was burdened with tenderness.
"Oh, Hartley!" she exclaimed, opening her eyes and looking with a kind of glad bewilderment into his face.

Then, half rising and drawing her arms around his neck, she hid her face on his bosom, murmuring-- "Thank God that it is only a dream!" "Yes, thank God!" replied her husband, as he kissed her in a kind of wild fervor; "and may such dreams never come again." She lay very still for some moments.

Thought and memory were beginning to act feebly.

The response of her husband had in it something that set her to questioning.