"Eve ... did you not say to me, 'If I were stricken blind in this hour—'" she stopped.
"'—from ten thousand women I could search you out by the scent of your hair,'" he finished.
Again they stayed long, staring into each other's eyes. Staring—glance falling to glance and rising again; staring with the brave, shame-stricken looks that women give to men they adore and endow, and men to women they rob, and bless—and rob again. Strange that two people who love each other cannot for long bear the ardent flame of each other's eyes.
"Part of it is lost—for ever," he said at last.... "Gone! ... only fragments remain. But there never was a dream like the dream we dreamt on that lost night." And after a long time:
"Poppy—where is my son?"
She lifted her eyes to him. The tears which she could never shed for herself would always come rushing forth for that sweet memory.
"All my love could not keep him, Eve."
She pulled a child's framed face from her bosom and held it up to his eyes. He saw the little familiar face he had looked at once before, pictured in a field of corn and poppies, and trembled. He gave it one swift, sorrowful look and then he wrapped his arms about her, and she lay on his breast.
"Do you regret?" he asked. "Have you ever regretted? Oh, God! how can I ask?"
"No, no," she cried, but her voice was faint. Even while she spoke she knew—none better than she—how vain were denials against the truth of the past. How all their memories and all their gladness to come must ever be salted with pain and tainted with the bitter gall of regret. How, when she laid a child in his arms, their thoughts would terribly fly to that lost son of a lost dream lying far from them in an alien land. They were transgressors—and the reward of transgressors must ever be theirs!