And she replied with an air of gracious diffidence infinitely
engaging:--"I can hardly tell you. For so long confusion has reigned in
my poor mind that all had become to me vague and undetermined. I was so
very tired that even that which I most craved, I, in a measure, shrank
from. I seemed to wander everlastingly in blank and desolate places. I
seemed to move in an interspace between the confines of two worlds, to
neither of which could I gain admittance. I could not go forward,
neither could I go back. Everything baffled me; everything was so
difficult to understand."
"But now you have left those blank and desolate places? Now you
understand?" Laurence asked, keenly interested in, yet a little dreading
her answer.
"I think so. Still joy has been too long a stranger, for me wholly to
trust it even yet. And I fear there are still lapses and deficiencies in
my intelligence. I could fancy--but doubtless these are but silly
fancies, born of illness--that I am not as I used to be, and that I
feel the miss of much I once had and now have not."
She looked up at him, her eyes troubled once more to their very depths.
"In what am I lacking, Laurence?" she inquired piteously. "I feel that I
am lacking, and I tremble lest I should disappoint you. Indeed, I will
strive to remedy my fault, whatever it may be, if you will but be
patient with me and tell me plainly of it, and give me opportunity to
effect a cure."
But he answered her soothingly, stung by the humility and innocence of
her attitude.
"You are wanting in nothing that time will not set right. But we must
make haste slowly, sweetheart. So put all these sick fancies out of your
head. We will worry neither about past or future; but, like true
economists, will enjoy the present. Now let us talk of the time before I
left you to rejoin my ship. Of that other melancholy time, after I left
you and before I came back, and of the changes it has brought along with
it, we will talk some other day--I trust there are many days for us
ahead."
And so they remained speaking of the incidents of that mysterious former
life, of which Laurence's recollection became momentarily more
circumstantial and coherent--speaking of little things, merry and
tender, such as lovers love--until, more than once, gusts of gentle
laughter swept through the yellow drawing-room, which, for such a length
of years, had been empty of all sound of human mirth. And not until the
rose-red fingers of the dawn--in colour matching his fairy-lady's
rose-red gown--first touched the eastern sky above the dome of the lime
grove and the broken outline of the woods, did Laurence and Agnes Rivers
cease to talk. Then she got up from her place in pretty haste.
"Ah!" she said, smiling, "I must go. Good Mrs. Lambart will reprove my
indiscretion in having remained here so late."
But Laurence was bound to ask her one question, which had been in his
mind during the whole course of their interview, yet had not so far
dared put to her.
"Tell me," he said, "I waited for you--why did you not meet me here last
night?"
"Ah!" she replied, "do not let us closely inquire into that. Something
terrible was abroad in the house. I think it was the Shadow of Death. It
stood between us--or I dreamed it did so.--But we fought against it. We
conquered it--at least I dreamed that we did. And it is gone.--But now,
dear love, indeed I too must go. Good-night, or rather good-morrow.
Carry happy thoughts away with you, even as I do, to sweeten rest."
And, without more ado, she flitted across the room, as though her little
feet in their diamond-powdered slippers could not go soberly, but must
dance for very joy, and, passing behind the tall escritoire, Laurence
once again was aware that she had disappeared and left no trace.