His hands released hers, and, looking up, she saw, even in the moonlight, that with the last word his face had gone ghastly white. At the sight, timidity, maidenly reserve, fell, and all the woman in her rushed uppermost. She lifted her arms and clasped his face.
"Hugh," she cried, "can't you remember? Don't you understand? Think! I was blind, dear, blind—a white bandage was across my eyes, and you came to me in a shaded room! Why did you come to me?"
A spark seemed to dart through his brain, like the prickling discharge from a Leyden jar. A spot of the mental blackness visualized, and for an instant sprang out in outlines of red. He smelled the odor of jasmin flowers. He saw himself standing, facing a figure with bandaged eyes. He saw the bandage torn off, felt that yielding body in his arms, heard a voice—her voice—crying, "Hugh—Hugh! My husband!" and felt those lips pressed to his own in the tense air of a darkened room.
A cry broke from his lips: "Yes, yes! I remember! Jessica, my wife!" His arms went round her, and with a little sob she nestled close to him on the doorstep.
The blank might close again about him now! He had had that instantaneous glimpse of the past, like lightning through a rifted pall, and in that glimpse was joy. For him there was now no more consciousless past or remorseful present. No forgery or exile, no Prendergast, or hatred, or evil repute. For her, all that had embittered, all that stood for loss and grieving, was ended. The fire on the hearth behind them domed and sank, and far below the lights of the streets wavered unheeded.
The shadowed silence of the cathedral pines closed them round. Above in the calm sky the great constellations burned on and swung lower, and in that dim confessional she absolved him from all sin.
CHAPTER XXX IN A FOREST OF ARDEN
Keen, morning sunlight, a sky clean as a hound's tooth, and an air cool and tinctured with the wine of perfect autumn! Jessica breathed it deeply as her buoyant step carried her along the mountain trails, brave in the pageant of the passing year. Her face reflected the rich color and her eyes were deep as the sky.