"I want some one to help me," she said, as if talking to herself; "the waters are very rough. I thought they would be all smooth after the great storm."
"Perhaps it is only the healthful rising of the tide," I ventured to say.
She looked at me, took her hands down from her head, her beautiful, classic head, with its wide, heavenly arch of forehead, and sat still thus, looking at me in that fixed way, that wellnigh sent me to call Katie again, for full ten minutes. I moved about the room, arranged the fire on a more quiet basis, and then, finding nothing else to do, stood before it, hoping that Miss Axtell would lie down again. In taking something from my pocket I must have drawn out the trophy of my tower-victory, for Miss Axtell suddenly said,—
"You've dropped something, Miss Percival."
Turning, I picked it up hastily, lest she should recognize it.
She must have seen it quite well, for it had been lying in the full light of the blazing wood.
"Have you a dress like that?" she asked, when I had restored the fragment.
"I have not," I replied. "I am sorry I awakened you."
"It was a dream that awakened me," she said. "Will you have the kindness to give me that bit of cloth you picked up? I have a fancy for it."
I gave it to her.