The caprice of a climate which vaunted itself perpetual summer was a
godsend to all the strangers strong enough to bear it without suffering.
For the sick an indoor life of huddling about the ineffectual fires of
the south began, and lasted for the fortnight that elapsed before the
Riviera got back its advertised temperature. Miss Gerald had drooped in
the milder weather; but the cold braced and lifted her, and with its
help she now pushed her walks farther, and was eager every day for some
excursion to the little towns that whitened along the shores, or the
villages that glimmered from the olive-orchards of the hills. Once she
said to Lanfear, when they were climbing through the brisk, clear air:
"It seems to me as if I had been here before. Have I?"
"No. This is the first time."
She said no more, but seemed disappointed in his answer, and he
suggested: "Perhaps it is the cold that reminds you of our winters at
home, and makes you feel that the scene is familiar."
"Yes, that is it!" she returned, joyously. "Was there snow, there, like
that on the mountains yonder?"
"A good deal more, I fancy. That will be gone in a few days, and at
home, you know, our snow lasts for weeks."
"Then that is what I was thinking of," she said, and she ran strongly
and lightly forward. "Come!"
When the harsh weather passed and the mild climate returned there was no
lapse of her strength. A bloom, palely pink as the flowers that began to
flush the almond-trees, came upon her delicate beauty, a light like that
of the lengthening days dawned in her eyes. She had an instinct for the
earliest violets among the grass under the olives; she was first to hear
the blackcaps singing in the garden-tops; and nothing that was novel in
her experience seemed alien to it. This was the sum of what Lanfear got
by the questioning which he needlessly tried to keep indirect. She knew
that she was his patient, and in what manner, and she had let him divine
that her loss of memory was suffering as well as deprivation. She had
not merely the fatigue which we all undergo from the effort to recall
things, and which sometimes reaches exhaustion; but there was apparently
in the void of her oblivion a perpetual rumor of events, names,
sensations, like--Lanfear felt that he inadequately conjectured--the
subjective noises which are always in the ears of the deaf. Sometimes,
in the distress of it, she turned to him for help, and when he was able
to guess what she was striving for, a radiant relief and gratitude
transfigured her face. But this could not last, and he learned to note
how soon the stress and tension of her effort returned. His compassion
for her at such times involved a temptation, or rather a question, which
he had to silence by a direct effort of his will. Would it be worse,
would it be greater anguish for her to know at once the past that now
tormented her consciousness with its broken and meaningless
reverberations? Then he realized that it was impossible to help her even
through the hazard of telling her what had befallen; that no such effect
as was to be desired could be anticipated from the outside.
If he turned to her father for counsel or instruction, or even a
participation in his responsibility, he was met by an optimistic
patience which exasperated him, if it did not complicate the case. Once,
when Lanfear forbearingly tried to share with him his anxiety for the
effect of a successful event, he was formed to be outright, and remind
him, in so many words, that the girl's restoration might be through
anguish which he could not measure.
Gerald faltered aghast; then he said: "It mustn't come to that; you
mustn't let it."
"How do you expect me to prevent it?" Lanfear demanded, in his vexation.