Chapter 27 - Page 2

real and remained also and even made the whiteness a less deathly thing.
And there was such a naturalness in the strange smiling that it radiated
actual peace and rest and safety. When the clock struck three and there
was no change and still the small face lay happy upon the pillow Dowie
at last even felt that she dare steal into her own room and lie down for
a short rest. She went very shortly thinking she would return in half an
hour at most, but the moment she lay down, her tired eyelids dropped and
she slept as she had not slept since her first night at Darreuch Castle.

* * * * *

When she wakened it was not with a start or sense of anxiety even
though she found herself sitting up in the broad morning light. She
wondered at her own sense of being rested and really not afraid. She
told herself that it was all because of the smile she had left on
Robin's face and remembered as her own eyes closed.

She got up and stole to the partly opened door of the next room and
looked in. All was quite still. Robin herself seemed very still but she
was awake. She lay upon her pillow with a long curly plait trailing over
one shoulder--and she was smiling as she had smiled in her
sleep--softly--wonderfully. "I thank God for that," Dowie thought as she
went in.

The next moment her heart was in her throat.

"Dowie," Robin said and she spoke as quietly as Dowie had ever heard her
speak in all their life together, "Donal came."

"Did he, my lamb?" said Dowie going to her quickly but trying to speak
as naturally herself. "In a dream?"

Robin slowly shook her head.

"I don't think it was a dream. It wasn't like one. I think he was here.
God sometimes lets them come--just sometimes--doesn't he? Since the War
there have been so many stories about things like that. People used to
come to see the Duchess and sit and whisper about them. Lady Maureen
Darcy used to go to a place where there was a woman--quite a poor
woman--who went into a kind of sleep and gave her messages from her
husband who was killed at Liège only a few weeks after they were
married. The woman said he was in the room and Lady Maureen was quite
sure it was true because he told her true things no one knew but
themselves. She said it kept her from going crazy. It made her quite
happy."

"I've heard of such things," said Dowie, valiantly determined to keep
her voice steady and her expression unalarmed. "Perhaps they are true.
Now that the other world is so crowded with those that found themselves
there sudden--perhaps they are crowded so close to earth that they try
to speak across to the ones that are longing to hear them. It might be.