He took the flowers eagerly, grasping them with both hands.
"Did she send them?" he whispered, mysteriously. "Did she?"
I smiled, but would not answer. The delusion seemed pleasant, and it would be cruelty to disturb it. He held the blossoms caressingly in his hand; a smile wandered over his lips, and he whispered over soft fragments of some melody that I remembered as one of Jessie's favorites.
Directly the flowers dropped from his grasp, and he began to search after the sunbeam again, clutching at it feverishly, and looking in his hands with vague wonder when he found them empty.
I do not think the young man recognized me at all; but my presence certainly aroused new associations.
He looked wistfully into my face with that vacant stare of delirium which is so painful, and then his eyes wandered away, as if in search of some object they could not find.
"Jessie," he murmured; "Jessie Lee, are you there? Won't you speak to me once more, Jessie?"
The expression of his countenance changed so entirely—a look of such tender, earnest entreaty settled about his handsome, sensitive mouth—that I felt the tears come into my eyes. When I looked up, I saw the stately old grandmother gazing directly upon me; while little Mrs. Bosworth, in her very efforts to be at the same time perfectly quiet and extremely useful, fluttered about in a feeble way that would have annoyed me beyond endurance had I been the sick person.
But the young man, apparently susceptible neither to outer sights nor sounds, saw nothing and heard nothing but the fanciful shapes and mocking whispers of his fever-visions.
"Put these flowers in your hair, Jessie," he said, somewhat brokenly, "they are wild flowers such as you love, and I love them for your sake—for your sake."