“No, dear, you are not altogether poisoned,” she said; “and the fact of your saying that you are shows there is some little sound piece left. If you were altogether poisoned, you wouldn’t know it; there would be nothing left to tell you that you were poisoned. But there is: you feel regret still. I saw it in your eyes just now, and though it cuts me to the heart, I love and rejoice to see it there. It is just your regret, your desire to do better, which is the precious soil out of which your salvation must spring.”
Her voice died on the last words, and she spoke in a whisper barely audible.
“Oh, Thurso, if you only knew how I cared!” she said.
For that moment he was touched. He looked at her with pity.
“Ah! but it is not going to be ‘poor Maud!’” she said. “You are going to get the poison out of your soul and body. Oh, Thurso, there are going to be many happy days yet.”
Once again the genial thrill of convalescence, that inflowing tide of strength and recovery, broke like a ripple a little further up the long dry beach, and once again desire stirred within him. But by an effort he detached himself from that, and turned his mind to her and to his own rescue.
“And do you really believe I can be cured?” he said. “Is an appalling young person to come and sit by me and sing doggerel hymns? I read something of the sort in a book I found at home the other day. It was yours, I suppose, or Alice’s?”
“Alice’s, I expect,” said she. “No; we shall have no appalling young person sitting by you. You know the healer I want you to go to, and you like him.”
Thurso frowned. He seemed to be able to remember nothing. His memory, he felt, was there, but all that it contained was locked up, and he could not find the key.