.

?" Her breath caught, as she flung a look about the room.
"One never knows." "It is all so strange.

There in Dresden everything was so happy, so undisturbed, the music and one's friends; it was all so natural.

And now--here--with Rupert and mother--it's like walking in one's sleep." "Well, I'll walk with you," he assured her.
But indeed that was exactly what it _was_ like, he thought, as he climbed the old and creaking stairs.

How often had one dreamed of the old dark house, the dusty latticed windows, the stairs with the gaping boards, at last that thin dark passage into which doors so dimly opened, that had black chasms at either end of it, whose very shadows seemed to demand the dripping of some distant water and the shudder of some trembling blind.