“I remember nothing,” he said. “This is the madness of a strange, wild dream. Presently I shall wake and find myself lying on golden bracken, while the dawn breaks in the east, and the stars pale in the sky. I have dreamed this dream before. I shall wake. It will mean losing you; but I must wake.” He leapt to his feet and shouted the last words; “I must wake!”
“Hush, my dearest, hush!” She spoke as if soothing a startled child. “Sit down, and I will explain. I can make all clear, if you will listen patiently. To you it is startling. But I have waited so long; I have known so long that you were coming. Sit down and listen. Striding about the room will not wake you, because this is no dream. It is blessed, blessed reality. Listen, Nigel! Listen, belovèd! I will make it all quite clear.”
She rose, poured out a glass of wine and brought it to him.
“Drink this. How your hand shakes!... No; I will not touch you; but I beg of you to drink it.”
She crossed the room, unlocked a bureau, took from it a despatch-box and placed it beside her on the couch.
“Now help me to tell you by listening calmly.
“We had three years of most perfect married life. No woman ever had such a lover, such a husband, as you were to me. No man was ever so adored by his wife as you were by me. We were old enough to understand our happiness and to take it to the full. I was twenty-eight and you were thirty when I lost you; but you were so gloriously young, so full of life and love and laughter. I used to say you would never grow up. Sometimes I felt like wife and mother in one, my heart overflowing with the tenderness of both. Yet you were so wise and strong and grandly good. In all things spiritual and mental I leaned on you and learned of you.
“We had one little daughter, a year old on that fatal 12th of August; but, dear though she was to us both, you were my All. My whole body and soul were yours, wrapped up in you. And your love for me was such a sweet deep mystery of tenderness that I scarce dared think of it, save when you were near me. Surely it is given to few to love as we loved, to experience what we experienced.
“We lived much in the open; riding, walking, climbing together. You were a magnificent swimmer and loved the sea. Often at dawn, on a summer morning, you would leave our bed, dash down to the shore, and swim up the golden pathway, straight toward the rising sun.
“Our room is over this one. Our windows open on to a broad balcony running along the top of the veranda. There a powerful telescope is mounted.