Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/102

 unconscious of their travels. Others have arisen refreshed with a new sense of knowledge and power. Louis Stevenson has confessed that he dreams his stories, and then writes them out. There was in a recent Academy the picture of a young girl walking with closed eyes amid poppies and hemlocks. The present writer has experienced, in his own career, an incident of hypnotic sleep or mesmeric trance, during which he went forth in very truth with knife and pistol to commit, as it seemed, some great crime, and was only prevented by the kindly guidance of a loving arm, that held his own and led him back to the couch from which he had risen.

And thus it was when Lord Francis exclaimed, "Too late! O Heaven! to think my own eyes should be witness of my own eternal shame, and—hers," the hand of Fate was stretched out against the intriguing and vicious Count de Mürger. For as Lord Francis staggered back to his room, dazed, stunned, the cold tears welling up into his eyes, his head on his arms, his whole form limp with shattered nerves, a new and terrible power was created within him. He fell into a chair, entirely overcome, and for a little while appeared to sleep. But it was the sleep that awakens, the mesmeric sleep that walks and acts, the dream-sleep that takes possession of body and mind; such sleep as that which afflicted Lady Macbeth after the murder of Duncan.