she was a living body buried. Her senses had become semi-lunatic.

She talked reasonably; and Rhoda, hearing her question and answer at
meal-times like a sane woman, was in doubt whether her sister wilfully
simulated a partial insanity when they were alone together. Now, in the
garden, Dahlia said: "All those flowers, my dear, have roots in mother
and me. She can't feel them, for her soul's in heaven. But mine is down
there. The pain is the trying to get your soul loose. It's the edge of
a knife that won't cut through. Do you know that?"

Rhoda said, as acquiescingly as she could, "Yes."

"Do you?" Dahlia whispered. "It's what they call the 'agony.' Only, to
go through it in the dark, when you are all alone! boarded round! you
will never know that. And there's an angel brings me one of mother's
roses, and I smell it. I see fields of snow; and it's warm there, and no
labour for breath. I see great beds of flowers; I pass them like a
breeze. I'm shot, and knock on the ground, and they bury me for dead
again. Indeed, dearest, it's true."

She meant, true as regarded her sensations. Rhoda could barely give a
smile for response; and Dahlia's intelligence being supernaturally
active, she read her sister's doubt, and cried out,--

"Then let me talk of him!"

It was the fiery sequence to her foregone speech, signifying that if her
passion had liberty to express itself, she could clear understandings.
But even a moment's free wing to passion renewed the blinding terror
within her. Rhoda steadied her along the walks, praying for the time to