She lay just like a child with her pale cheeks still wet, and the long black lashes glistening.

Her little hand, so slender and finely shaped, rested lightly against the pillow; her soft regular breathing just broke the complete stillness enough to give the aspect of sleep, instead of that of death.

She was fair enough, in her sweet girlish beauty and innocence, to have been a poet's or an artist's inspiration.

The mother's eyes grew very dim as she looked at her child, but she never guessed that there had been more than the stir of surprise in her heart that day--that she was "sleeping for sorrow." It was twilight in the room when Lucia woke.

She came slowly to the recollection of the past, and the consciousness of the present, and without moving began to gather up her thoughts and understand what had happened to her, and why she had slept.