CHAPTER XVI.
So we must keep apart, You there, I here, With just the door ajar That oceans are, And prayer, And that pale sustenance Despair! -- EMILY DICKENSON.
It was a little after Christmas when Michael first began to take notice of his surroundings once more.

There was no love or tenderness that Wentworth could have shown him which the grave young Italian doctor did not lavish on him.
Little by little the mist in which Michael lay shifted and cleared, and closed in on him again.

But the times when it cleared became nearer together.

He felt that the great lethargy in which he lay would shift when the mist shifted.

Dimly, as if through innumerable veils, he was aware that something indefinable but terrible crouched behind it.