“When I was sick,” he said whimsically, “I suffered from delusions. The most amazing as well as the pleasantest of these fancies was that one day you came and sat beside my bed where you are sitting now, only, inexplicably, your arms were about me, and your face was close to mine upon the pillow. I was out of my body then. I think I should have slipped away altogether but for those restraining arms. I’ve lain often and tried to will the vision back, but it never reappeared.”
He turned in the bed and lifted himself slightly on his elbow.
“You are far more elusive than that fancy of mine,” he grumbled.
He gripped the hand he held tighter, and pulled her towards him.
“I thought you weren’t conscious,” she said, stooping lower. “I didn’t guess you knew...”
“Zoë! my dear! my dear!” he cried, his face close to hers. “All these years without you! ... How have I borne it? I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth,—a rudderless ship that has drifted with the current, that has had no helm to answer to, no one on the look-out. I wonder that I didn’t go aground a dozen times. I should have got aground if there had not been the flame of my love for you alight in my heart to show me the danger places when I came to them. You have been my guiding star throughout the years. I never thought that we should meet, much less come together again; but I’ve always borne your goodness, your purity, in mind as things that counted, that kept a man from breaking himself on the reckless impulses of his own selfishness. I’ve been a limited, carnal-minded cad. But whatever brief passion has possessed me, I have never loved anyone but you. Zoë, I hate myself when I think of the past. I want to get away and hide myself—from you.”
“Don’t think of it,” she said soothingly. “We’ve done with all that.”
He looked at her wonderingly.
“What made you follow me out here?” he asked. “What brought you to this place, believing what you believed of me? ... It puzzles me to understand.”
She put out her other hand and laid it upon his shoulder and pushed him gently but firmly back upon the pillow.