She awoke reluctantly, even resentfully.
"Don't!" she entreated like a child.

"I am so tired.

Let me sleep." "My poor dear, I know all about it," a motherly voice made answer.
"But it's time for you to wake." She did not grasp the words--only, very vaguely, their meaning; and this she made a determined, but quite fruitless, effort to defy.

In the end, being roused in spite of herself, she opened her eyes and gazed upwards.
And all his life long Nick Ratcliffe remembered the reproach that those eyes held for him.

It was as if he had laid violent hands upon a spirit that yearned towards freedom, and had dragged it back into the sordid captivity from which it had so nearly escaped.
But it was only for a moment that she looked at him so.