Dartmouth opened his eyes and looked about him. The storm had died,
the waves were at rest, and he was alone. He let his head fall back
against the frame of the window, and his eyes closed once more. What a
dream!--so vivid!--so realistic! Was it not his actual life? Could
he take up the threads of another? He felt ten years older; and,
retreating down the dim, remote corridors of his brain, were trooping
memories of a long, regretted, troubled, eventful past. In a moment
they had vanished like ghosts and left no trace; he could recall none
of them. He opened his eyes again and looked down the gallery, and
gradually his perceptions grasped its familiar lines, and he was
himself once more. He rose to his feet and put his hand to his head.
That woman whom he had taken for the ghost of one dead and gone had
been Weir, of course. She had arisen in her sleep and attired herself
like the grandmother whose living portrait she was; she had piled up
her hair and caught her white gown up under her bosom; and, in the
shadows and mystery of night, small wonder that she had looked as if
the canvas in the gallery below had yielded her up! But what had her
words meant?--her words, and that dream?--but no--they were not what
he wanted. There had been something else--what was it? He felt as if a
mist had newly arisen to cloud his faculties. There had been something
else which had made him not quite himself as he had stood there with
his arms about the woman who had been Weir, and yet not Weir. Above
the pain and joy and passion which had shaken him, there had been
an unmistakable perception of--an attribute--a quality--of another
sort--of a power, of which he, Harold Dartmouth, had never been
conscious--of--of--ah, yes! of the power to pour out at the feet of
that woman, in richest verse, the love she had awakened, and make them
both immortal. What were the words? They had been written legibly in
his brain; he remembered now. He had seen and read them--yes, at last,
at last! "Her face! her form!" No! no! not that again. Oh, why would
they not come? They had been there, the words; the sense must be
there, the inspiration, the battling for voice and victory. They were
ready to pour through his speech in a flood of song, but that iron
hand forced them back--down, down, setting blood and brain on fire.
Ah! what was that? Far off, at the end of some long gallery, there
was a sweet, dying strain of music, and there were words--gathering in
volume; they were rolling on; they were coming; they were thundering
through his brain in a mighty chorus! There! he had grasped them--No!
that iron hand had grasped them--and was hurling them back. In another
moment it would have forced them down into their cell and turned
the key! He must catch and hold one of them! Yes, he had it! Oh!
victory!--"Her eyes, her hair."
Dartmouth thrust out his hands as if fighting with a physical enemy,
and he looked as if he had been through the agonies of death. The
conflict in his brain had suddenly ceased, but his physical strength
was exhausted. He turned and walked uncertainly to his room; then he
collected his scattered wits sufficiently to drop some laudanum and
take it, that he might ward off, if possible, the attack of physical
and spiritual prostration which had been the result of a former
experience of a similar kind. Then, dressed as he was, he flung
himself on the bed and slept.