"Oh, beautiful--and sweet--and true!"
The girl gave a little sob and hid her face.
"A goddess!" he whispered. "'A queen among goddesses!' That's--what
the little Jew said. 'A queen among goddesses.--The young Juno,
before----'" He stirred restlessly where he lay, and he complained--
"My head hurts! What's the matter with my head? It hurts."
She dipped one of the towels in the basin of cold water and held it to
the man's brow. The chill of it must have been grateful for his eyes
closed and he breathed a little satisfied. "Ah!
"It mustn't hurt to-night," said he. "To-night at two--by the little
door in the garden wall. And he's coming with us. The young fool is
coming with us.... So she and I go out of each other's lives....
"Coira!" he cried with a sudden sharpness. "Coira, I won't have it! Am
I going to lose you ... like this? Am I going to lose you after all ...
now that we know?" He put up his hand once more--a weak and uncertain
hand. It touched the girl's warm cheek and a sudden violent shiver
wrung the man on the couch. His eyes sharpened and stared with
something like fear.
"_Real!_" he cried, whispering. "Real? ... Not a dream?"
"Oh, very real, my Bayard!" said she. A thought came to her and she
drew away from the couch, and sat back upon her heels, looking at the
man with grave and sombre eyes. In that moment she fought within
herself a battle of right and wrong.
"He doesn't remember," she said. "He doesn't know. He is like a little
child. He knows nothing but that we two--are here together. Nothing
else. Nothing!"
His state was plain to see. He dwelt still in that vague borderland
between worlds. He had brought with him no memories, and no memories
followed him save those her face had wakened. Within the girl a great
and tender passion of love fought for possession of this little hour.
"It will be all I shall ever have!" she cried piteously. "And it cannot
harm him. He won't remember it when he comes to his senses. He'll
sleep again and--forget. He'll go back to her and never know. And I
shall never even see him again. Why can't I have my little sweet hour?"
Once more the man cried her name, and she knelt forward and bent above
him.
"Oh, at last, Coira!" said he. "After so long! ... And I thought it was
another dream."
"Do you dream of me, Bayard?" she asked. And he said--
"From the very first. From that evening in the Champs Elysees. Your
eyes, they've haunted me from the very first.
"There was a dream of you," he said, "that I had so often--but I cannot
quite remember because my head hurts. What is the matter with my head?
I was--going somewhere. It was so very important that I should go, but
I have forgotten where it was and why I had to go there. I remember
only that you called to me--called me back--and I saw your eyes--and I
couldn't go. You needed me."
"Ah, sorely, Bayard! Sorely!" cried the girl above him.
"And now," said he, whispering.
"Now?" she said.
"Coira, I love you," said the man on the couch. And Coira O'Hara gave a
single dry sob. She said--
"Oh, my dear love! now I wish that I might die after hearing you say
that. My life, Bayard, is full now. It's full of joy and gratefulness
and everything that is sweet. I wish I might die before other things
come to spoil it."
Ste. Marie--or that part of him which lay at La Lierre, laughed with a
fine scorn, albeit very weakly.
"Why not live instead?" said he. "And what can come to spoil our life
for us?
"_Our life!_" he said again in a whisper. A flash of remembrance seemed
to come to him for he smiled, and said--
"Coira, we'll go to Vavau."
"Anywhere!" said she. "Anywhere!"
"So that we go together."
"Yes," she said gently, "so that we two go together." She tried with a
desperate fierceness to make herself like the man before her, to put
away, by sheer power of will, all memory, the knowledge of everything
save what was in this little room, but it was the vainest of all vain
efforts. She saw herself for a thief and a cheat--stealing, for love's
sake, the mere body of the man she loved while mind and soul were
absent. In her agony she almost cried out aloud as the words said
themselves within her. And she denied them. She said--
"His mind may be absent but his soul is here. He loves me. It is I, not
that other. Can I not have my poor little hour of pretence? A little
hour out of all a lifetime! Shall I have nothing at all?"