These were among his most vivid recollections; but voices came back to him plainest of all.
The voices of the professional nurses, whispering where they little dreamt there was a listener; foreboding the worst; comparing notes with their last fatal cases; throwing into their tones a kind of pity worse than open indifference—perfunctory and cold. Or, again, these same voices telling how a certain name was always on the feverish lips upstairs.
"Ah, poor soul!" said they; "she thinks of nothing but him!"
Of whom? Whose name was for ever on her lips? The name of him to whom she had breathed her last conscious words?
Even so; for another voice had echoed through the silent house more than once, and could never be forgotten by those who heard it; the piercing, heart-rending, delirious voice of Alice herself, reiterating those last conscious words of hers:
"Hear what it was he said to me, and my answer—which is my answer still!"
What had Miles said? What had been Alice's answer? Who would ever know? Not Dick; and these words came back to him more often than any others, and they tortured him.
But there were other words—words that had been spoken but yesterday, and as yet seemed too good to be true; the words of the kind old country doctor:
"She is out of danger!"