"Sleep has left me."
"Yet you said you were not very ill?"
"I am often sleepless when in high health."
"If I had power, I would lap you in the most placid slumber—quite deep and hushed, without a dream."
"Blank annihilation! I do not ask that."
"With dreams of all you most desire."
"Monstrous delusions! The sleep would be delirium, the waking death."
"Your wishes are not so chimerical; you are no visionary."
"Miss Keeldar, I suppose you think so; but my character is not, perhaps, quite as legible to you as a page of the last new novel might be."
"That is possible. But this sleep—I should like to woo it to your pillow, to win for you its favour. If I took a book and sat down and read some pages? I can well spare half an hour."