Thus she dreamed—a new day-dream, unravaged by the sordid tests of verity.
So absorbed was she that she did not hear a step approaching over the springy moss—a sharply drawn breath, as the intruder stifled an exclamation. She had drawn her handkerchief across her eyes against the dancing glimmer of sunlight. Suddenly it dropped to her lap, and she half turned.
In the instant of surprise, as Harry's look flashed into hers, a name sprang unbidden to her lips—a name that struck his strained face to sudden whiteness, ringing in his ears like the note of a sunken bell. All that was clamoring in him for speech rushed into words.
"You call my name!" he cried. "You know me! Have I ever been 'Hugh' to you? Is that what your look said to me? Is that why your face has haunted me? Tell me, I pray you!"
She had struggled to her feet, her hands pressed to her bosom. The surprise had swung her from her moorings. Her heart had been so full in her self-communings that now, between the impulse toward revealment and the warning of caution, she stood confused.
"I had never seen you in the town before that day," she said. "I am stopping there"—she pointed to the ridge above, where the roof of the sanatorium glistened in the sunlight. "I was at the hotel by merest accident when—you played."
The light died in his eyes. He turned abruptly and stared across the foliaged space. There was a moment's pause.
"Forgive me!" he said at length, in a voice curiously dull. "You must think me a madman to be talking to you like this. To be sure, every one knows me. It is not strange that you should have spoken my name. It was a sudden impulse to which I yielded. I had imagined ... I had dreamed ... but no matter. Only, your face—that white band across your eyes—your voice—they came to me like something far away that I have known. I was mistaken. I was crazy to think that you—"
He stopped. A wave of sympathy passed over her. She felt a mad wish to throw all aside, to cry to him: "You did know me! You loved me once! I am Jessica—I am your wife!" So intense was her emotion that it seemed to her as if she had spoken his name again audibly, but her lips had not moved, and the tap of a woodpecker on a near-by trunk sounded with harsh distinctness.
"I have wanted to speak to you," she said, after an instant in which she struggled for self-control. "You did a brave thing yesterday—a splendid thing. It saved me from sorrow all my life!"