But the words I heard both troubled and amazed me:
"Help me! For I am in the dark still!" went through me like a sword. "And I do not know how long."
I took her face in both my hands; I kissed her. "You are with friends," I said. "You are safe with us, with me—Marion!" And I apparently tried to put into my smile the tenderness that clumsy words forswore. Her next words shocked me inexpressibly: "You laugh," she said, "but I——" she sighed—"I weep."
I stroked her face and hair. No words came to me.
"You call me Marion," she went on in an eager tone that surely belied her pain and weakness, "but I do not remember that. I have forgotten names." Then, as I kissed her, I heard her add in the clearest whisper possible, as though no cloud lay upon her mind: "Yet Marion will do—if by that you know me now."
There came a pause then, but after it such singular words that I could hardly believe I heard aright, although each syllable sank into my brain as with pointed steel:
"You come to me again when I lie dying. Even in the dark I hear—how long I do not know—I hear your words."
She gave me suddenly then a most piercing look, raising her face a little towards my own. I saw earnest entreaty in them. "Tell me," I murmured; "you are nearer, closer to me than ever before. Tell me what it is?"
"Music," she whispered, "I want music——"
I knew not what to answer, what to say. Can you blame me that, in my troubled, aching heart, I found but commonplaces? For I thought of the harp, or of some stringed instrument that seemed part of her.