Seated in shadow on the couch, she watched the dark face, so fine in its stern intentness, bending over the paper; the strong, nervous hand waiting to turn each page; the dark hair, from which no cropping could cut the curl.
“God in heaven,” she sighed, “he has come back to me in answer to the insistence of my frantic prayer; but he has returned emptied of all memory. Oh, of Thine infinite mercy, let there rise in his mind the floodtide of remembrance.”
Thus she prayed and yearned and hoped, while the man in the chair slowly read the letter, written, in his own handwriting, a year before his birth.
“August 12th, 1882.
“My own sweet Wife,
“You and I are so full of happy, buoyant life, that it seems a strange anomaly that I should sit down to write to you of death: we are so intimately one in heart and mind, so wedded in each moment of our perfect life together, that there seems no need to face the possibility of parting. Yet, lately, there has come to me a chill presentiment that, in the very midst of life and joy, a sudden death may come with one swift stroke; that you and I, belovèd, counting on fifty blissful years together, may, in one fatal moment, be wrenched apart.
“So I have made my will, leaving everything to you. All is in order. Fergusson will manage the estate. Thomas and his wife can be wholly trusted in the house. I leave my wife in faithful hands.
“So much for outward things. But what can I say to comfort you, my Love, my Own, in the utter loneliness of heart and soul, which will, alas, be yours when you read this?
“Try to realise that we are not lost to one another.
“‘Nothing can untwine