The utterly unexpected revelation that Lenore had made to madame drew the two women into a tender intimacy that brought a holy joy to both of them. That most beautiful, most priceless flowering of Lenore’s life gave to her nature an added sweetness, and to her soul a new depth that rendered her incomparably beautiful in the eyes of every one around her. The secret remained a secret between her and her new-made mother, and for this reason the happiness of the two was as inexplicable as it was joyous for the rest of the Castle. Alixe, standing jealously without the gate of this golden citadel, into which she had frequent glimpses, wondered at its brightness as much as she wondered at its existence at all. Day by day Lenore grew beautiful, and day by day the look of content upon her face became more marked, until it was marvelled at how she had forgotten her bereavement. And Eleanore—Madame Eleanore—found herself growing young again in the youth of Gerault’s bride; and in her love for the beautiful, tranquil girl she learned a lesson in patience that fifty years of trial and sorrow had never brought her.

When Lenore finally rose from her bed she did not return to the mornings in the spinning-room; and, since madame must perforce be there to oversee the work, Alixe took her frame or her wheel to Lenore’s chamber, and sat there through the morning hours. Save for the fact that Alixe could not be addressed on the subject nearest her heart, Lenore probably enjoyed these periods of the younger woman’s company quite as much as those graver times with madame. Both of them were young, and Alixe, having a nature the individuality of which nothing could suppress, knew more of the gayeties of youth than one could have thought possible, considering her opportunities. This jumped well with Lenore’s disposition, for her own sunny nature would have shone through any cloud-thickness, provided there was some one to catch the beam and reflect it back to her. The two talked on every conceivable subject, but generally reverted to one common interest before many hours had gone. This was Nature: of which Lenore had been vaguely, but none the less passionately fond; and of which Alixe, in her lonely life, had made a beautiful and minute study. The two of them together watched the death of the summer, and saw autumn weave its full woof, from the rich colors of golden harvest and purple vine to the melancholy brown and gray of dead moorland and leafless branch. And when the dreariness of November came upon the land, there remained, to their keen eyes, the sea—the sea that is never twice the same—the sea whose beauties cannot die.

This sea, which Lenore had never looked on till she came a bride to CrÉpuscule, held for her a deep fascination. She watched it as an astronomer watches his stars. And its vasty, changing surface came to exercise a peculiar influence over her quiet life. The night of the great storm brought it into double conjunction with the bitterest grief in her life; and, with the knowledge of its cruel power, awe was added to her interest and her admiration. She and Alixe were accustomed to talk daily of the lost Lenore, Lenore herself always introducing the topic with irresistible eagerness, and Alixe answering her innumerable questions with an interest born of curiosity regarding the young widow’s motive. In the presence of Alixe, Lenore never betrayed the tiniest tremor of sensitiveness; and it would have been impossible for Alixe to surmise how keen was the secret bitterness that lay hidden in her heart. What suffering it brought she endured alone, by night, and indeed she kept herself for the most part well shielded from it.

From the first night after Gerault’s burial, Lenore had insisted upon sleeping alone. To every suggestion of company she replied that solitude was precious to her, and that she could not sleep with another in the room. Eleanore understood her feeling, and, while she left an easy access from her room to Lenore’s, never once ventured to enter Lenore’s chamber after nightfall. For this, indeed, the young woman was grateful, not because of any joy she found in being alone in the darkness, but because, after she had gone to bed, she felt that her veil of appearances had fallen, and that she might let her mind take what temper it would. It was by night that she knew the terrible yearning for the dead that all women have in time, and from which they suffer keenest agony. It was by night that she pictured Gerault not as he had been, but as she had wished him to be toward her; and gradually Gerault dead came to be vested with every perfect quality, till her loss became endurable to her through the hours of her dreaming. By night, also, her childhood returned to her; and she recalled and gently regretted all the simple pleasures she had known, the rides and games and caroles that she had been wont to indulge in, in her father’s house. Sometimes, too, in hours of distorted vision, she came to feel that her great blessing was rather a burden; and she would weep at the thought of the little thing that must be born to the interminable shadows of this grim Castle, and felt that she alone would be responsible for the sadness of the young life. Yet there might be fair things devised for him. It could not be but a boy,—her child; and in his early youth she planned that he should ride to some distant, gay chateau, to be esquired to a gallant knight; and in time he should come riding home to her, himself golden-spurred; and then, later, he should bring a lady to the Castle whom he should love as a man loves once; and the two of them would bring the light of the sun to CrÉpuscule, and banish its shadows forever away. So dreamed Lenore for this unborn babe of hers.

And then again, sometimes, by night, she would leave her bed and sit for hours together at that window where, long ago, Gerault had knelt in the hour of his passion. And Lenore would watch the quiet moon sail serenely through the sky, till it sank, at early dawn, under the other sea. And this vision of the setting moon never failed to bring peace to her heart. Sometimes, after Gerault’s example, but not in his tone, she would call down from her height upon the spirit of the lost Lenore that was supposed to walk the rocky shore at the base of the Castle cliff. But no answering cry ever reached her ears, and this was well; for what such a thing would have brought to her already morbid mind, it were sad to surmise. Nevertheless, in the nights thus spent, this gentle ghost came to have a personality for her, in which she rather rejoiced, for she felt that here must be some one in whom she could expect understanding of her secret grief. Lenore at night, living with the creatures of her fancy, was a strange little being, no more resembling the Lenore of daylight than a gnome resembles some bright fairy. And so well did she hide her midnight moods that no one in the Castle ever so much as suspected them.

It was not till the middle of November that Alixe learned of the hope of CrÉpuscule; but when she did know, her tenderness for Lenore became something beautiful to see, and she partook both of Eleanore’s deep joy and of Lenore’s quiet content. Three or four days after the knowledge had come to her, Alixe was pacing up and down the terrace in front of the Castle, side by side with Lenore. It was a blustering, chilly day, and both young women drew their heavy mantles close around them as they watched the great flocks of gulls wheel and dip to the sea, looking like flurries of snowflakes against the sombre background of the sky. Far out in the bay one or two of the crude fishing-boats from St. Nazaire were beating their way southward toward their harbor, and then Lenore watched with eyes that dilated more and more with interest and desire.

“Alixe,” she said suddenly, “canst thou sail a boat?”

“Why dost thou ask?”

“Certes, for that I would know.”

Alixe laughed. “’Tis a reason,” she said.

“Tell me, Alixe! Make me answer!”

“Knowest thou not that, after the drowning of the demoiselle Lenore, it was forbidden any one in CrÉpuscule to put out upon the sea in any boat, though he might be able to walk the water like Our Lord?”

“Hush, Alixe! But yet—thou’st not replied to me.”

“Well, then, if thou wouldst know, I can sail a boat, and withal skilfully. In the olden days, Laure—’twas Gerault’s sister—and I have gone out in secret an hundred times in a fisherman’s boat anchored a mile down the shore, in front of some of the peasants’ huts. Laure and I paid the fisherman money to let us take the boat; for she loved it as well as I. Indeed, I have been lonely for it since her going.”

“Ah! Since her going thou’st not known the sea?”

“Not often. Alone, with a heavy boat, there is danger.”

“Alixe, take me with thee sometime! Soon! To-day! My soul is athirst to feel the tremor of the boiling waves!”

“Madame!” murmured Alixe, not relishing what she considered an ill-advised jest.

“Nay! Look not like that upon me! I would truly go. Can we not set forth? There is yet time ere dark.”

From sheer nervousness Alixe laughed. Then she said solemnly: “Madame Lenore, right willingly, hadst thou need of it, I would yield up my life to you; but venture forth with you upon those waters will I not; nor thou nor any other that were not mad, would ask it.”

Lenore frowned at these words, but she said nothing more, either on that subject or another; and presently the two went back into the Castle. But a strange desire had been born in Lenore, and she brooded upon it continually. Day by day she hungered for the sea; and, though she did not again suggest her wish, there were times when the roar of the waves on the cliffs, and the cold puffs of air strong with the odor of the salt tide, came near unbalancing her mind, and drove uncanny thoughts of watery deaths through her heart. But through that long winter she betrayed only occasional evidences of the effect that illness, loneliness, and long brooding were having upon her mind; and perhaps it was only the dread of betrayal that in the end saved her from actual insanity.

December came in and advanced in the midst of arctic gales and continually swirling snow, till Brittany was wrapped deep under a pure, fleecy blanket. It was the season of warmth and idleness indoors, when the poorest peasant got out his chestnut-bag, and merrily roasted this staple article of his diet before the fire by night. The Christmas spirit was on all men; and this in Brittany was tempered and tinctured with the quaintest fairy-lore relating to the season, and as real to every Breton as the story of their Christ. The Christmas mass was no more devoutly enjoyed than was the great feast, held a week later, on the night known throughout Brittany not as the New Year, but as St. Sylvester’s Eve, when all elfdom was abroad to guard the treasures left uncovered by the thirsty dolmens. And this, and an infinite number of other tales, of witch and gnome, sprite and fay, sleeping princess and hero-king, of Viviane and her wondrous forest of Broecilande, were told anew, each year, behind locked doors, before the crackling fires that burned from dusk to enchanted midnight.

To Lenore, the holy week from Christmas to New Year’s was replete with interest; for in her own home, near Rennes, she had known nothing like it. Christmas morning saw all the peasantry of the estates of CrÉpuscule come to the Castle for mass; after which there was a great distribution of alms.

From Christmas Day, throughout that week, according to ecclesiastic law, the Castle drawbridge was never raised; no watchers were posted on the battlements, and monk and knight, outlaw and criminal, high lord and lady, found welcome and food and shelter within the great gray walls. This open hospitality was made safe by the fact that, during this time, no matter what war might be in progress, or what family feud in height, no man was allowed to lift a hand against his neighbor, and the knight that dared to use his sword during those seven days was branded caitiff throughout his life. This law prevailed throughout the length and breadth of France; but its observance belonged more peculiarly to the far coast regions, where towns were scarce, and feudal fortresses offered the only hope of shelter to the traveller. And during this week there was scarcely an hour in the day that did not see its wanderer, of whatever degree, appealing for safe housing from the bitter cold.

The week was the merriest and the busiest that Lenore had known since coming to the Castle; and the arrival of the Bishop of St. Nazaire, on the day before New Year’s, brought all Le CrÉpuscule to the highest state of satisfaction. For many years it had been monseigneur’s custom to spend St. Sylvester’s Day in the Castle,—formerly as the guest of the old Seigneur, latterly as that of Madame Eleanore; and though the Twilight Castle always delighted to honor his coming, on such occasions it was a double pleasure; for upon this one day he carried with him a spirit of bonhomie, of general, rollicking gayety, that roused every one to the same pitch of happiness, and made the Saint’s feast what it was.

Since the last home-coming of Gerault, St. Nazaire had spent a good deal of time at the Castle, had played many a well-fought game of chess with Madame Eleanore, and had exerted himself to lift little Lenore, for whom he entertained almost a veneration, out of her quiet melancholy. None in the Castle, from Alixe to the scullions, but would have done him any service; and his arrival assured the feast of something of its one-time merriment.

On this great day the time for midday meat was set forward two hours, it being just one o’clock when the company sat down at the immense horseshoe table, that nearly encircled the great hall; for the ordinary Castle retinue was increased by a rabble of peasants, and a dozen or more of travellers that had claimed their privilege of hospitality.

As Madame Eleanore, handed by the Bishop, took her place at the head of the table, the band of musicians in the stone gallery overhead sent out a noisy blast of trumpets, and everybody sought a place. Beside madame, supported by Courtoise, came Lenore; and again by her were Alixe, with Anselm the steward. When these were all standing behind their tabourets, monseigneur repeated the grace, in Latin. Immediately upon the amen, the trumpets rang out again, and there was a great rustling as everybody sat down and, in the same breath, began to talk. After a wait of not less than ten seconds, there appeared four pages, bearing high in their hands four huge platters, on each of which reposed a stuffed boar’s head, steaming fragrantly. Two more boys followed these first, carrying immense baskets of bread,—white to go above the salt, black for those below. Then came Grichot, the cellarer, rolling into the room a cask of beer, which was set up in the space between the two ends of the curved table, and tapped. Instantly this was surrounded by a throng of struggling henchmen, friars, and peasants, each with his horn in his hand, eager to be among the first to drink allegiance to their lady. Madame and her little party in the centre of the table were served with wine of every description known to the north; besides mead or punches for whosoever should call for them.

Lenore was seated between Courtoise and monseigneur; and for her alone of all the company, apparently, the feast held less of merriment than of sadness. When every one was seated, and the clatter of tongues had begun, she looked about her, vaguely wondering how many times she should, by this feast, measure a year passed in the grim Castle. Looking along the table either way, at the double rows of men and women, Lenore saw every mouth working greedily upon food already served, and every hand outstretched for more, as rapidly as the various dishes could be brought in. She saw burly men, roaring with the laughter of animal satisfaction, drinking down flagon after flagon of bitter beer. She caught echoes and fragments of coarse jokes and coarser suggestions; and her delicate nature revolted at the scene. She turned to look toward the mistress of the Castle, wondering how madame, who was of a fibre as fine as her own, could endure such sights and sounds. Eleanore sat calmly listening to monseigneur, her eyes lifted a little above the level of the scene, her lips smiling, her air pleasantly animated, though she was scarcely eating, and only a cup of milk stood before her place. As for the Bishop, he was unfeignedly enjoying himself. A generous portion of roast peacock was on his plate, and a bottle of red wine stood close at his elbow. His wit was at its best, and he was entertaining all his immediate neighborhood with such stories and reminiscences as he alone could relate. Lenore found relief in the sight of him and madame, and, pulling herself together, turned to the young squire on her right hand, and began to talk to him gently. Roland listened to her with the reverent adoration entertained for her by every man about the Castle; but his replies were a little inadequate, and presently Lenore was again sitting silent, her burning eyes staring straight in front of her, her white face, framed in its shining hair, looking very set, her white robes gleaming frostily in the candle-light, her whole bearing stiffly unapproachable. She was nervous and uneasy, and she longed intensely to escape to her own quiet room. But there was madame talking serenely on, apparently unconscious of the gluttony around her; there was Alixe the Scornful, merrily jesting with Anselm, who had forgotten his frowns and his Latin together. Here was a great company of varied people, variously making merry, among whom there was not one that could have understood or excused her displeasure with the scene. Therefore she was fain to sit on, disconsolate, enduring as best she might her weariness and her contempt.

“En passant!” cried the Bishop, presently, “where is David le petit? Is the dwarf lying sick?”

“Why, indeed, I do not know,” answered Eleanore, looking around her. “David! Is David not among us?” she cried.

At this moment there was a commotion at one end of the room, and presently the table began to shake. Dishes and flagons clattered together, and a little ripple of laughter rose and flowed along from mouth to mouth, following the progress of David himself, who was darting rapidly down the table, picking his way easily between clumps of holly and tall candles, and dishes and plates and flagons, as he moved around toward Madame Eleanore and her little party. His costume added materially to the effect of his appearance, for he was dressed like an elf, in scarlet hose, pointed brown shoes, tight jerkin of brown slashed with red, and peaked, parti-colored cap. In this garb his tiny figure showed off straight and slender, and his ruddy face and glittering eyes gave him proper animation for the role he had chosen to play.

Flying down the table till he came to a halt in front of madame and the Bishop, he jerked the cap from his head, whirled lightly round on his toes, twice or thrice, and then, with a quaint gesture of introduction, he sang, in a sing-song tone, these verses:—

With the last words he drew, from a fat pouch at his side, a handful of bright bits of quartz-crystal, and, tossing them high in the air, let them fall over him and down upon the table in a glittering shower. There was a quick scramble for them; and then, with an uncanny laugh, David pirouetted down the table, backward, guiding himself miraculously among the articles that loaded the board, flinging about him, at every other step, more of his “jewels,” and now and then singing more extemporaneous verses concerning his mysterious country. All the table paused in its eating and drinking to watch him, for, when he chose, he was a remarkably clever and magnetic actor. To-day he was making an unusual effort, and presently even Lenore leaned forward a little to catch his words; and, in a swift glance, he perceived that some color had come into her cheeks, and a faint light into her eyes.

It made a pleasant interlude in the feasting; and when at length the little man, with a hop and a spring, left the table, and came round to the place where he was accustomed to sit, he was followed by a burst of enthusiastic applause.

The gayety that he had excited by his rhymes and his pebble shower did not die away for some time. By now, however, the eating was at an end, and a lighter tone of conversation spread through the room, as the footboys brought in two extra casks of beer and some dozens of bottles of red wine. This was the wished-for stage of the day’s entertainment, and if there was any one present that should be unminded for what was to come, this was the signal for departure. Madame Lenore was the only one in the room to go; but she rose the moment that the table had been cleared of food, and, with a slight bow to madame and monseigneur, slipped quietly to the stairs and passed up to her room with a relief in her heart that the day was over.

The last white fold of Lenore’s drapery had scarcely disappeared round the bend in the stairway, when there came a knocking upon the outer door of the great hall, which was presently thrust open, before one of the henchmen could reach it, to let in a beggar from the bitter cold outside. It was the last day of the week of hospitality, and perhaps this wanderer was the more readily admitted for that fact. It was a woman, ragged, unkempt, and purple with cold. Madame Eleanore just glanced at her, and then signed to those at the lower end of the table to give her place with them, and bring her food. But the new-comer seemed not to notice the invitations of those near by. She stood still, gazing intently toward Madame Eleanore, till presently one of the henchmen, somewhat affected with liquor, sprang from his place with the intention of pulling her to a seat. In this act he got a view of her face with the light from a torch falling full across it. Instantly he started back with a loud exclamation,—

“Mademoiselle!”

Then all at once the woman, holding out both her arms toward madame’s chair, swayed forward to her knees with a low wailing cry that brought the whole company to their feet. There was one moment of terrible silence, and then a woman’s scream rang through the room, as Madame Eleanore staggered to her feet and started forward to the side of the wanderer.

“Laure! Laure! O God! my Laure!”

As the two women—madame now on her knees beside her daughter—intertwined their arms, and the older woman felt again the living flesh of her flesh, the throng at the table moved slowly together and drew closer and closer to these central figures. Nearest of all stood Alixe and Courtoise, white-faced, tremulous, but with great joy written in their eyes. They had recognized Laure simultaneously an instant before madame, but they had restrained themselves from rushing upon her, leaving the first place to the mother.

Eleanore was fondling Laure in her arms, murmuring over her inarticulate things, while tears streamed from her eyes, and her strained throat palpitated with sobs. What Laure did or felt, none knew. She lay back, half-fainting, in the warm clasp; but presently she struggled a little away, and sat straight. Pushing the tangled hair out of her eyes,—those black, brilliant eyes that were still undimmed,—and seeing the universal gaze upon her, she shrank within herself, and whispered to her mother: “In the name of God, madame, I prithee let me be alone with thee!”

Then Eleanore bethought herself, and rose, lifting Laure also to her feet. For a moment she looked about her, and then with a mere lifting of her hand dispersed the crowd. They melted away like snow in rain, till only three were left there in the great hall: Courtoise, Alixe, and lastly monseigneur, who during the whole scene had stood apart from the throng, the law of excommunication heavy upon him. Forbid a mother, starved by nearly a year of denial of her child, to satisfy herself now that that child was at last returned to her? Not he, the man of flesh and blood and human passions!

Madame stood still for an instant in the centre of the disordered room, supporting Laure with one arm. Then she turned to Alixe.

“Go thou, Alixe, and get food,—milk, and meat, and bread,—and bring it in the space of a few moments to my room. But let no other seek to disturb us in our solitude. Now, my girl!”

Madame led her daughter across the hall and up the stairs, and to the door of her bedroom, into which Laure passed first. Madame followed her in, and closed and fastened the door after her. Then she turned to her child.

At last they were alone, where no human eyes could perceive them, no human ear hear what words they spoke. And now Eleanore’s arms dropped to her sides, and she stood a little off, face to face with Laure. With Laure? Yes, it was she,—there could be but one woman like her,—with her tall, lithe, straight form, terribly wasted now by hardship and suffering: with those firm features, and the unrivalled hair that hung, brown and unkempt, to her knees. And again, it was not the Laure that the mother had known. In her eyes—the great, doubting, haunted, shifting eyes—lay plainly written the story of the iron that had entered into her soul. And there was that in her manner, in her bearing, that something of defiant recklessness, that pierced her mother like a knife. It was not the rags and the dirt of her body; it was the rags and dirt of her defiled soul.

The girl looked straight before her into space; but she saw her mother’s head suddenly lowered, and she saw her mother’s hands go up before her face.

Then came Alixe’s knock at the door; and Laure went and opened it, took in the food, set it down on the bed, shut and fastened the door again, and returned to her mother, who was sitting now beside the shuttered window, her head lying on her arms, which rested on a table in front of her.

There was a silence. Laure’s hand crept up to her throat and held it tight, to keep the strain of repressed sobs from bursting her very flesh. Her eyes roved round the old, familiar, twilight room; but just now she did not see. Her brain was reeling under its weight of agonized weariness. What was she to say or do? What was there for her here? Her mother sat yonder, bent under the weight of her sin. Was there any excuse for her to make? Should she try to give reasons? Worst of all, should she ask forgiveness? Never! Laure had the pride of despair left in her still. She had come home dreaming that the gates of heaven might still be open to her. She found them barred; and the password she could not speak. Hell alone, it seemed, remained.

“Madame,” she said in a hard, quiet voice, “I have come wrongfully home, thinking thou couldst give me succor here. But I perceive that I do but pain thee. I will go forth again. ’Tis all I ask.”

At the mere suggestion that Laure should go again, madame’s heart melted and ran in tears within her. “Ah, Laure! my baby—my girl—thou couldst not leave me again?” she cried in a kind of wail.

“Mother! First of all, I came to thee!” said the girl, in a whisper that was very near a sob.

But, unexpectedly, Eleanore rose again, with a gleam of anger coming anew into her eyes. “Nay; thou didst not first of all come to me! If thou hadst—if thou hadst—ere thou wast stolen away by the cowardly dastard that hath ruined thee—!”

Laure trembled violently, and her voice was faint with pleading: “Speak no ill of him, madame! I was not stolen away. Freely, willingly, I went with him. Freely—” she drew herself up and held her head high—“freely and willingly, though with the curse of Heaven on my head, would I go with him still, were it in the same way!”

“God of God! why hast thou left him, then?”

A black shadow spread itself out before Laure’s eyes, and in her unpitying wilderness her woman’s soul reeled, blindly. Her voice shook and her body grew rigid, as she answered: “I—did not—leave him.”

“He is dead?” Eleanore’s tone was softer.

“No; he is not dead!” Laure’s face contorted terribly, as there suddenly rushed over her the memory of the last three months; and as it swept upon her, she sank to her knees, and held out her hands again in supplication: “Ah, pity me! pity me! As thou’rt a woman, pity me, and ask me not what’s gone! I loved him. God in Heaven! How did I love him! And he hath gone from me. Mine no more, he left me to wander over the face of the earth. He left me to weep and mourn through all the years of mine empty life. Flammecoeur! Flammecoeur! How wast thou dearer than God! more merciless than Him.” Here her words became so rapid and so incoherent that all meaning was lost, and the deserted woman, exhausted, overcome with her torn emotions, presently fell heavily forward to the floor, in a faint.

In this scene Eleanore had forgotten every scruple, every resentment, everything save her own motherhood and Laure’s need. Putting aside all thought of the girl’s shame, her abandonment, her rejection, she went to her and lifted her up in her strong and tender arms, and, with the art known only to the big-souled women of her type, poured comfort upon the bruised and broken body of the wanderer, and words of cheer and encouragement into her more cruelly bruised and broken mind. In a few moments Laure had recovered consciousness, had grown calm, and was weeping quietly in her mother’s arms.

Then madame began to make her fit for the Castle again. She took off the soiled and ragged garments, that hung upon the skin and bone of her wasted body. She bathed the poor flesh with hot water, and with her own tears. She combed and coiled the wonderful, tangled hair. And lastly, wrapping her, for warmth, in a huge woollen mantle, she led Laure over to her bed, drew back the heavy curtains, and laid the weary woman-child in it, to rest.

When Laure felt this soft comfort; when she realized where, indeed, she was and who was bending over her; when she knew what land of love and of tenderness she had finally reached after her months of anguished wandering,—it seemed that she could bear no more of mingled joy and pain. She let her tears flow as freely as they would. She clung to her mother’s hand, smoothing it, kissing it, pressing it to her cheek; and finally, lulled by the sound of her mother’s voice crooning an old familiar lullaby, her mind slipped gradually out of reality, and she went to sleep.

Long and long and long she slept, with the sleep of one that is leaving an old life behind, and entering slowly into the new. And for many hours her mother watched her, in the gathering darkness, till after Alixe had come softly in, and lit a torch near by the bed. And later the mother, unwilling to leave her child for a single moment, laid herself down, dressed as she was, and, drawing Laure’s passive form close to her, finally closed her eyes, and, worn out with emotion and with joy, lost herself in the mists of sleep.