XIX.
When I spoke to him first I spoke in the French language. Before he answered, the scream of a blue jay in the elms outside set my nerves aquiver, and I called for Donald and Walter.
As I lay there I could see the Aspen hills from the window, heaps of crumpled gold bathed in sunshine. Over them sailed the froth from the silken milkweed; over them drifted the big brown-red butterflies, luminous as richest autumn leaves.
Some one closed the door softly. The doctor had gone.
The sunlight poured into the window, etching my shadow on the wall behind. Lying very still there I saw it motionless beside me. The shadow was black.
Somebody said in the next room, "Will he die?"
"Die?" I said aloud.
A bird twittered outside my window.
The door opened again, noiselessly.
"Sweetheart?" I whispered.
"Yes, Jack."
After a moment I said, "When do you go back to school?"
"I? I finished school a year ago."
"Come nearer."
"I am here, Jack."
"Time stopped a year ago."
"A year ago to-day."
The same gray eyes, the same face, paler, perhaps.
"We have journeyed far," I sighed, "always together, but in those days our shadows were white as snow. Am I going to die? There are tears in your eyes."
They fell on my cheek; her arms fell too, closer, closer, around my neck.
"Life has begun," she said.
"Life? What was the year that ends to-day? The magic second of life?"
"A year of death, to me!"
Ah, but her soul knows of a life in death! And she shall know it, too, when her shadow turns whiter than snow. For the Temple of Idols has closed its doors at the sound of a voice, and an idol of gilt has turned to flesh and blood.
I-hó!
So shall she know of the life in death when her soul and her body are one.