The muse returned with the broth; Dianthe drank it eagerly and called for water, then with her hand still clasped in Reuel’s she sank into a deep sleep, breathing softly like a tired child. It was plain to the man of science that hope for the complete restoration of her faculties would depend upon time, nature and constitution. Her effort to collect her thoughts was unmistakable. In her sleep, presently, from her lips fell incoherent words and phrases; but through it all she clung to Reuel’s hand, seeming to recognize in him a friend.

A little later the doctors filed in noiselessly and stood about the bed gazing down upon the sleeper with awe, listening to her breathing, feeling lightly the fluttering pulse. Then they left the quiet house of suffering, marvelling at the miracle just accomplished in their presence. Livingston lingered with Briggs after the other physicians were gone.

“This is a great day for you, Reuel,” he said, as he laid a light caressing hand upon the other’s shoulder.

Reuel seized the hand in a quick convulsive clasp. “True and tried friend, do not credit me more than I deserve. No praise is due me. I am an instrument—how, I know not—a child of circumstances. Do you not perceive something strange in this case? Can you not deduce conclusions from your own intimate knowledge of this science?”

“What can you mean, Reuel?”

“I mean—it is a dual mesmeric trance! The girl is only partly normal now. Binet speaks at length of this possibility in his treatise. We have stumbled upon an extraordinary case. It will take a year to restore her to perfect health.”

“In the meantime we ought to search out her friends.”

“Is there any hurry, Aubrey?” pleaded Reuel, anxiously.

“Why not wait until her memory returns; it will not be long, I believe, although she may still be liable to the trances.”

“We’ll put off the evil day to any date you may name, Briggs; for my part, I would preserve her incognito indefinitely.”

Reuel made no reply. Livingston was not sure that he heard him.

CHAPTER V

THE world scarcely estimates the service rendered by those who have unlocked the gates of sensation by the revelations of science; and yet it is to the clear perception of things which we obtain by the study of nature’s laws that we are enabled to appreciate her varied gifts. The scientific journals of the next month contained wonderful and wondering (?) accounts of the now celebrated case,—re-animation after seeming death. Reuel’s lucky star was in the ascendant; fame and fortune awaited him; he had but to grasp them. Classmates who had once ignored him now sought familiar association, or else gazed upon him with awe and reverence. “How did he do it?” was the query in each man’s mind, and then came a stampede for all scientific matter bearing upon animal magnetism.