GEORGE AND LEOPOLD.
George went again to Leopold's room, and sat down by him. The youth lay with his eyes half closed, and a smile—a faint sad one—flickered over his face. He was asleep: from infancy he had slept with his eyes open.
"Emmeline!" he murmured, in the tone of one who entreats forgiveness.
"Strange infatuation!" said George to himself: "even his dreams are mad! Good God! there can't be anything in it—can there? I begin to feel as if I were not quite safe myself. Mad-doctors go mad themselves, they say. I wonder what sort of floating sporule carries the infection—reaching the brain by the nose, I fancy. Or perhaps there is latent madness in us all, requiring only the presence of another madness to set it free."
Leopold was awake and looking at him.
"Is it a very bad way of dying?" he asked.
"What is, old boy!"
"Hanging."
"Yes, very bad—choking, you know," answered George, who wanted to make the worst of it.
"I thought the neck was broken and all was over," returned Leopold, with a slight tremor in his voice.