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ROM sleep as from drugged stupour Judith Trine awakened, struggling back to consciousness like some exhausted diver from the black depths of a night-bound pool. At first she could not recognize her surroundings. This chamber of rough plank walls and primitive furnishings, this hard couch she shared with her still slumbering sister Rose, the view of tree-clad mountains revealed by an open window at the bedside, conveyed nothing to her intelligence.

A formless sense of some epochal change in the habits and mental processes of a lifetime added to her confusion. Who was she herself, this strange creature who rested there so calmly by the side of Rose? … If she were Judith Trine, how came she to be there? The sisters had sedulously avoided association with each other ever since childhood: they had not shared the shelter of four walls overnight since time beyond the bounds of Judith's memory! What, then, had so changed them both that they should be found in such close company? 263