"I'm sure they must hurt you dreadfully," she exclaimed, as she gently bathed the hands. "It makes me feel quite ill to see them."
For the next few moments Shiel was in Paradise. The touch of her cool, white fingers on his hot and burning skin was far nicer than anything he had ever imagined. Her sweet-scented breath stealing gently up his nostrils soothed away all his care—even the remembrance of his recent loss.
With his whole heart and soul concentrated in his gaze, he watched her every movement—watched the waving and tossing of the stray wisps of hair over her temples and ears, as the breeze rustled through the open windows; and the gentle tightening and relaxation of her delicately moulded lips each time she breathed.
Shiel had always led a very solitary existence. Apart from his uncle he had no near relatives, and with the exception of the five or six weeks in the year he had spent at Dick Davenport's house at Sydenham, he had always been in rooms. He had often felt lonely, but never quite so lonely as now—now that the only person he had known intimately and for whom he had entertained any real affection, was suddenly taken away. He was now absolutely alone in the world, and the poignancy of his position came home to him acutely.
It is a terrible thing to be lonely. Lonely men do all sorts of dreadful things—things they would certainly never dream of doing if they had companionship. And Shiel was doing a dreadful thing now. Every moment he was falling more and more desperately in love, despite the fact that he had no money, and worse still—no prospects of ever making any. And loneliness was in the main responsible for it.
Had he not been so lonely—had he not spent days and days, alone in lodgings, with no one to talk to—no one to care whether he were ill or dying; had this not been his experience—the experience he was even then undergoing, reason would have outweighed folly, and even though he might have realized that in Gladys Martin he had found his ideal of beauty—of womanliness, he would have been content only to admire.
As it was, he was in that very dangerous mood when the heart yearns for sympathy; when a plain woman's sympathy means much—and a pretty woman's more than much. It is no exaggeration to say that Shiel would have lain down and died for Gladys ten times over. For her sake—if only to see her smile, no mere physical pain would have been too excruciating for him to bear. And when she put the finishing touches to the bandages, and quite by chance, of course, their eyes met, he looked at her as if he never meant to leave off looking at her, as if he never meant to do anything else but look at her for all eternity.
Whether she understood as much or not, is impossible to say. Shiel asked himself the question over and over again before the day was out, and in his sleep, and during the next day, and for many days afterwards. Could she tell how much he admired her? How much he worshipped her? All that he was prepared to do for her sweet sake? All this he asked himself repeatedly, and went on thinking of her when he knew he ought never to have thought of her at all.
"I'm sure your hands are more comfortable now. Won't you go into the garden and see how the work is progressing?" she said. "Or if you are afraid Father will want you to dig again, perhaps you would like to go into his study and read the papers."
"I should like to stay here and listen to you singing," he said. "Mayn't I do that?"