Stella was amazed. She remembered an occasion when he had spoken of her feet with singular intelligence, and felt a tiny stir of interest in her deadened heart—even determined that she would speak to him about it.
The next day she chanced to find him brooding over the book in which he had long ceased recording the progress of opium culture on Hagen’s Island. There was a far-away look in his eyes—a look of great stillness; and she knew he was under the brief delicious spell of recent indulgence.
“Ferd,” she said, sitting down near him and trying dully to occupy her fingers with some mending, “you talked all night about shoes—do you remember?”
At first a vaguely startled expression came into his eyes, and she had a sudden sense of danger—even drew back a little, instinctively. But the expression changed to one of such utter serenity that it grew in time to—almost an ashen radiance.
“Oh, yes,” he murmured, gazing at her musingly as she sat, her needle busy. His body shook all over in a light yet constant way. And he repeated, very dreamily: “Oh, yes. I remember. There were so many—all sorts of people—and they came in a line that seemed to stretch clear off to the end of the world.” He sighed. “Sometimes it seemed as though I never could take care of so many. But I was all alone, and there was nothing else to do.”
“Strange,” she said.
“What did you say, Stella?”
“I was thinking how strange it is you should have had a dream like that....” Her voice sounded flat and monotonous to her. She realized, even as she spoke, how little it mattered.
“Strange?” he repeated, still dreamily.
He had the look of a man who feels eternity rolling all around him. He sat like a Buddhist figure, and the radiance in his face took on a sublime, translucent quality. Exaltation held his soul poised and untortured in a realm of breathlessness and peace. And he smiled, for suddenly it seemed to him that his whole life hung together like some perfect fabric, and that all that had entered it was somehow essential—even beautiful and almost holy. He laughed, a soft, murmuring laugh, terrible in its uncanny detachment, and rocked gently back and forth. His mind grew immeasurably clear and calm. Then his lips began moving, a flood of words fell about her—a soft, astounding, irresistible flood. And she sat there, amazed, trembling, almost under a spell.