and beloved they lay there sleeping, while the dawn brightened in the sky, she leaning against the bed where he was stretched, he with his hand on her hair. And strangely, the moment that she slept, their positions seemed to be reversed, and Hugh in his sleep appeared unconsciously to keep watch over and guard her, though all night she had been awake for him. Once her head slipped an inch or two, so that his hand no longer lay on her hair, but it seemed as if that movement reached down to him fathom-deep in his slumber and immediately afterwards his hand, which had lain so motionless and inert all night, moved, as if to a magnet, after that bright hair, seeking and finding it again. And dawn brightened into day, and the sun leaped up from his lair in the East, and still Nadine slept, and Hugh slept. It was as if until then the balance of vitality had kept the girl awake to pour into him of her superabundance: now she was drained, and sleep with the level stroke of his soft hand across the furrows of trouble and the jagged edges of injury and exhaustion comforted both alike.
It had been arranged after these events of storm that the party should disperse, and Dodo went to early breakfast downstairs with her departing guests, who were leaving soon after. But first she went into the nurse's room, next door to where Hugh lay, to make enquiries, and was taken by her to look into the sick-room. With daylight their sleep seemed only to have deepened: it was like the slumber of lovers who have been long awake in passion of mutual surrender, and at the end have fallen asleep like children, with mere effacement of consciousness. Nadine's head was a little bowed forward, and her breath came not more evenly than his. It was the sleep of childlike content that bound them both, and bound them together.
Dodo looked long, and then with redoubled precaution moved softly into the nurse's room again, with mouth quivering between smiles and tears.
"My dear, I never saw anything so perfectly sweet," she said. "Do let them have their sleep out, nurse. And Nadine has slept in Hugh's room all night. What ducks! Please God it shall so often happen again!"
Nurse Bryerley was not unsympathetic, but she felt that explanations were needed.
"I understood the young lady was engaged to some one else," she said.
Dodo smiled.
"But until now no one has quite understood the young lady herself," she said. "Least of all, has she understood herself. I think she will find that she is less mysterious now."
"Mr. Graves will have to take some nourishment soon," said Nurse Bryerley.
Dodo considered.
"Then could you not give him his nourishment very cautiously, so that he will go to sleep again afterwards?" she asked. "I should like them to sleep all day like that. But then, you see, nurse, I am a very odd woman. But don't disturb them till you must. I think their souls are getting to know each other. That may not be scientific nursing, but I think it is sound nursing. It's too bad we can't eternalize such moments of perfect equilibrium."
"Certainly the young lady was awake till nearly dawn," said Nurse Bryerley. "It wouldn't hurt her to have a good rest."
Dodo beamed.
"Oh, leave them as long as possible," she said. "You have no idea how it warms my heart. There will be trouble enough when they awake."
Seymour was among those who were going by the early train, and when Dodo came down he had finished breakfast. He got up just as she entered.
"How is he?" he asked.
Dodo's warm approbation went out to him.
"It was nice of you to ask that first, dear Seymour," she said. "He is asleep: he has slept all night."
Seymour lit a cigarette.
"I asked that first," he said, "because it was a mixture of politeness and duty to do so. I suppose you understand."
Dodo took the young man by the arm.
"Come out and talk to me in the hall," she said. "Bring me a cup of tea."
The morning sunshine flooded the window-seat by the door, and Dodo sat down there for one moment's thought before he joined her. But she found that no thought was necessary. She had absolutely made up her mind as to her own view of the situation, and with all the regrets in the world for him, she was prepared to support it. In a minute Seymour joined her.
"Nadine came down to the beach just before Hugh went in yesterday morning," he said, "and she called out—called?—shouted out, 'Not you, Hughie: Seymour, Berts, anybody, but not you!' There was no need for me to think what that meant."
Dodo looked at him straight.
"No, my dear, there was no need," she said.
"Then I have been a—a farcical interlude," said he, not very kindly. "You managed that farcical interlude, you know. You licensed it, so to speak, like the censor of plays."
"Yes, I licensed it, you are quite right. But, my dear, I didn't license it as a farce; there you wrong me. I licensed it as what I hoped would be a very pleasant play. You must be just, Seymour: you didn't love her then, nor she you. You were good friends, and there was no shadow of a reason to suppose that you would not pass very happy times together. The great love, the real thing, is not given to everybody. But when it comes, we must bow to it.... It is royal."
All his flippancy and quickness of wit had gone from him. Next conversation remained only because it was a habit.
"And I am royal," he said. "I love Nadine like that."
"Then you know that when that regality comes," she said quickly, "it comes without control. It is the same with Nadine; it is by no wish of hers that it came."
"I must know that from Nadine," he said. "I can't take your word for it, or anybody's except hers. She made a promise to me."
"She cannot keep it," said Dodo. "It is an impossibility for her. She made it under different conditions, and you put your hand to it under the same. And Nadine said you understood, and behaved so delightfully yesterday. All honor to you, since behind your behavior there was that knowledge, that royalty."
"I had to. But don't think I abdicated. But she was in terrible distress, and really, Aunt Dodo, the rest of your guests were quite idiotic. Berts looked like a frog; he had the meaningless pathos of a frog on his silly face—"
"Nadine said he looked like a funeral with plumes," Dodo permitted herself to interpolate.
"More like a frog. Edith kept pouring out glasses of port to take to Nadine, but I think she usually forgot and drank them herself. It was a lunatic asylum. But Nadine felt."
"Ah, my dear," said Dodo, with a movement of her hand on to his.
Seymour quietly disengaged his own.
"Very gratifying," he said, "but as I said, I take nobody's word for it, except Nadine's. She has got to tell me herself. Where is she? I have to go in five minutes, but to see her will still leave me four to spare."
Dodo got up.
"You shall see her," she said. "But come quietly, because she is asleep."
"If she is only to talk to me in her sleep—" began he.
"Come quietly," said Dodo.
But
