The spring has come. The air of the April night just lifts theleaves of the sleeping flowers. The moon is queen in thecloudless and starless sky. The stillness of the midnight hour isabroad, over land and over sea.

In a villa on the westward shore of the Isle of Wight, the glassdoors which lead from the drawing-room to the garden are yetopen. The shaded lamp yet burns on the table. A lady sits by thelamp, reading. From time to time she looks out into the garden,and sees the white-robed figure of a young girl pacing slowly toand fro in the soft brightness of the moonlight on the lawn.Sorrow and suspense have set their mark on the lady. Not rivalsonly, but friends who formerly admired her, agree now that shelooks worn and aged. The more merciful judgment of othersremarks, with equal truth, that her eyes, her hair, her simplegrace and grandeur of movement have lost but little of theirolden charms. The truth lies, as usual, between the two extremes.In spite of sorrow and suffering, Mrs. Crayford is the beautifulMrs. Crayford still.

The delicious silence of the hour is softly disturbed by thevoice of the younger lady in the garden.

"Go to the piano, Lucy. It is a night for music. Play somethingthat is worthy of the night."

Mrs. Crayford looks round at the clock on the mantelpiece.

"My dear Clara, it is past twelve! Remember what the doctor toldyou. You ought to have been in bed an hour ago."

"Half an hour, Lucy--give me half an hour more! Look at themoonlight on the sea. Is it possible to go to bed on such a nightas this? Play something, Lucy--something spiritual and divine."

Earnestly pleading with her friend, Clara advances toward thewindow. She too has suffered under the wasting influences ofsuspense. Her face has lost its youthful freshness; no delicateflush of color rises on it when she speaks. The soft gray eyeswhich won Frank's heart in the by-gone time are sadly alterednow. In repose, they have a dimmed and wearied look. In action,they are wild and restless, like eyes suddenly wakened fromstartling dreams. Robed in white--her soft brown hair hangingloosely over her shoulders--there is something weird andghost-like in the girl, as she moves nearer and nearer to thewindow in the full light of the moon--pleading for music thatshall be worthy of the mystery and the beauty of the night.

"Will you come in here if I play to you?" Mrs. Crayford asks. "Itis a risk, my love, to be out so long in the night air."

"No! no! I like it. Play--while I am out here looking at the sea.It quiets me; it comforts me; it does me good."

She glides back, ghost-like, over the lawn. Mrs. Crayford rises,and puts down the volume that she has been reading. It is arecord of explorations in the Arctic seas. The time has gone bywhen the two lonely women could take an interest in subjects notconnected with their own anxieties. Now, when hope is fastfailing them--now, when their last news of the _Wanderer_ and the_Sea-mew_ is news that is more than two years old--they can readof nothing, they can think of nothing, but dangers anddiscoveries, losses and rescues in the terrible Polar seas.

Unwillingly, Mrs. Crayford puts her book aside, and opens thepiano--Mozart's "Air in A, with Variations," lies open on theinstrument. One after another she plays the lovely melodies, sosimply, so purely beautiful, of that unpretending and unrivaledwork. At the close of the ninth Variation (Clara's favorite), shepauses, and turns toward the garden.

"Shall I stop there?" she asks.

There is no answer. Has Clara wandered away out of hearing of themusic that she loves--the music that harmonizes so subtly withthe tender beauty of the night? Mrs. Crayford rises and advancesto the window.

No! there is the white figure standing alone on the slope of thelawn--the head turned away from the house; the face looking outover the calm sea, whose gently rippling waters end in the dimline on the horizon which is the line of the Hampshire coast.

Mrs. Crayford advances as far as the path before the window, andcalls to her.

"Clara!"

Again there is no answer. The white figure still stands immovablyin its place.

With signs of distress in her face, but with no appearance ofalarm, Mrs. Crayford returns to the room. Her own sad experiencetells her what has happened. She summons the servants and directsthem to wait in the drawing-room until she calls to them. Thisdone, she returns to the garden, and approaches the mysteriousfigure on the lawn.

Dead to the outer world, as if she lay already in hergrave--insensible to touch, insensible to sound, motionless asstone, cold as stone--Clara stands on the moonlit lawn, facingthe seaward view. Mrs. Crayford waits at her side, patientlywatching for the change which she knows is to come. "Catalepsy,"as some call it--"hysteria," as others say--this alone iscertain, the same interval always passes; the same change alwaysappears.

It comes now. Not a change in her eyes; they still remain wideopen, fixed and glassy. The first movement is a movement of herhands. They rise slowly from her side and waver in the air likethe hands of a person groping in the dark. Another interval, andthe movement spreads to her lips: they part and tremble. A fewminutes more, and words begin to drop, one by one, from thoseparted lips--words spoken in a lost, vacant tone, as if she istalking in her sleep.

Mrs. Crayford looks back at the house. Sad experience makes hersuspicious of the servants' curiosity. Sad experience has longsince warned her that the servants are not to be trusted withinhearing of the wild words which Clara speaks in the trance. Hasany one of them ventured into the garden? No. They are out ofhearing at the window, waiting for the signal which tells themthat their help is needed.

Turning toward Clara once more, Mrs. Crayford hears the vacantlyuttered words, falling faster and faster from her lips

"Frank! Frank! Frank! Don't drop behind--don't trust RichardWardour. While you can stand, keep with the other men, Frank!"

(The farewell warning of Crayford in the solitudes of the FrozenDeep, repeated by Clara in the garden of her English home!)

A moment of silence follows; and, in that moment, the vision haschanged. She sees him on the iceberg now, at the mercy of thebitterest enemy he has on earth. She sees him drifting--over theblack water, through the ashy light.

"Wake, Frank! wake and defend yourself! Richard Wardour knowsthat I love you--Richard Wardour's vengeance will take your life!Wake, Frank--wake! You are drifting to your death!" A low groanof horror bursts from her, sinister and terrible to hear."Drifting! drifting!" she whispers to herself--"drifting to hisdeath!"

Her glassy eyes suddenly soften--then close. A long shudder runsthrough her. A faint flush shows itself on the deadly pallor ofher face, and fades again. Her limbs fail her. She sinks intoMrs. Crayford's arms.

The servants, answering the call for help, carry her into thehouse. They lay her insensible on her bed. After half an hour ormore, her eyes open again--this time with the light of life inthem--open, and rest languidly on the friend sitting by thebedside.

"I have had a dreadful dream," she murmurs faintly. "Am I ill,Lucy? I feel so weak."

Even as she says the words, sleep, gentle, natural sleep, takesher suddenly, as it takes young children weary with their play.Though it is all over now, though no further watching isrequired, Mrs. Crayford still keeps her place by the bedside, tooanxious and too wakeful to retire to her own room.

On other occasions, she is accustomed to dismiss from her mindthe words which drop from Clara in the trance. This time theeffort to dismiss them is beyond her power. The words haunt her.Vainly she recalls to memory all that the doctors have said toher, in speaking of Clara in the state of trance. "What shevaguely dreads for the lost man whom she loves is mingled in hermind with what she is constantly reading, of trials, dangers, andescapes in the Arctic seas. The most startling things that shemay say or do are all attributable to this cause, and may all beexplained in this way." So the doctors have spoken; and, thusfar, Mrs. Crayford has shared their view. It is only to-nightthat the girl's words ring in her ear, with a strange propheticsound in them. It is only to-night that she asks herself: "IsClara present, in the spirit, with our loved and lost ones in thelonely North? Can mortal vision see the dead and living in thesolitudes of the Frozen Deep?"