The doctor sat quite still and watched the vision fade. Then he said: "Well?"
"Well," continued the young voice in the shadow, with a sound in it of having dropped back to earth and finding it a mournful place; "I never had a moment's doubt as to what had happened to me. I knew I loved her; I knew I wanted her; I knew her presence made my day and her absence meant chill night; and every day was radiant, for she was there."
Garth paused for breath and to enjoy a moment of silent retrospection.
The doctor's voice broke in with a question, clear, incisive. "Was she a pretty woman; handsome, beautiful?"
"A pretty woman?" repeated Garth, amazed: "Good heavens, no! Handsome? Beautiful? Well you have me there, for, 'pon my honour, I don't know."
"I mean, would you have wished to paint her?"
"I HAVE painted her," said Garth very low, a moving tenderness in his voice; "and my two paintings of her, though done in sadness and done from memory, are the most beautiful work I ever produced. No eye but my own has ever seen them, and now none ever will see them, excepting those of one whom I must perforce trust to find them for me, and bring them to me for destruction."
"And that will be—?" queried the doctor.
"Nurse Rosemary Gray," said Garth.
The doctor kicked the pine log, and the flames darted up merrily. "You have chosen well," he said, and had to make a conscious effort to keep the mirth in his face from passing into his voice. "Nurse Rosemary will be discreet. Very good. Then we may take it the One Woman was beautiful?"