“I will,” said Gilead.
She gaped at him aghast, blinking her swollen lids.
“You?” she whispered; then added, “please, what’s your name?”
He told her. Something in the answer, vaguely associating it with a Sunday-school memory of peace and righteousness, appeared to reassure her. She backed against the wall to let him enter. He found himself in a cool dark little hall, having a door ajar and a flight of stairs to the left, and a closed door in front. This last the girl approached, snuffling and on tiptoe, and opening it softly, revealed a pleasant green-toned room which gave, through French windows, upon a square of embowered garden. She peeped fearfully round the door-edge, hesitated, then re-emerged and beckoned the visitor.
“There she is,” she whispered hysterically, “jest as she went down.”
Gilead stepped gently into the room. It was quite warm and cosy and still—like a bower almost to the little green pleasance beyond. And, in keeping with its vernal privacy, it had its sleeping nymph. She lay upon a green sofa, like a waxen figure upon a “property” bank. Gilead’s first thought was of the lovely St. Amaranthe in the Tussaud exhibition, which had once haunted his childish dreams. Only the artificial figure had seemed to breathe more naturally than this. There were here, however, the same beautiful immobile face, the same rose-petal complexion—cream just rounding into pink under the closed eyes—the same ripe perfection of form, the same suggestion of eternal restfulness. That other figure, he remembered, had always stood to his innocent mind for the embodiment of the Sleeping Beauty; and here she was, incarnated out of wax. Her dress—of velvet, or velveteen, a deeper shade of green than the sofa—fell in a slumberous bloom of folds; one milk-white arm, half buried under a coil of brown hair, cushioned her head; the other, limp and motionless, trailed its relaxed fingers upon the carpet, whereon lay a telegraph form.
Gilead stood some moments regarding the beautiful picture with the enthusiasm of a virtuoso. “It would be a black shame,” was something of his thought, “to let this fine work fall into the clutches of a Vandal!” The terms of the advertisement were in his mind.
“It looks like a cataleptic seizure,” he said to the girl. “Is she subject to them, do you know?”
The tweenie shook her poor little watery noddle.
“I’ve never known her do the like,” she said, “since I come here.”