He made no reply. He did not seem to have heard her. But still she was conscious of her immense power over him.
“Paul,” she said again. “Come back with me.”
He heard her then; but now it was as if he could not see her. He looked about him, half-startled, half-resentful. “There’s no way back from the plains of France,” he said, and a sudden doubt shook her. Her power to hold him was failing. From out of the ground the darkness was rising again like a swelling lake of still, black smoke, clinging about her feet with an awful weight of recall.
She was sinking into the blackness, struggling against its vast strength as it rose, sluggish and irresistible, to her waist, her breast, her neck. She could not fight its immense strength, but her power had returned to her. They might be drowned together in the darkness, but she would compel him to come with her. She could see him no longer, but she was aware of her limitless ability to hold him to her by the power of her longing and her love....
She came slowly out of some remote distance to a realisation of herself lying unaccountably still and dazed on her own bed. She could not move, as yet, but her eyes were open, and she could see the grey outline of the room in the growing daylight.
And then, again, clearly, but more distantly, she heard the sound of Paul’s voice repeating his strange assertion.
“I’m dead,” he said, but in the tone there was now, she thought, the first flicker of a doubt, the statement of wonder.
She made a great effort and raised herself.
He was sitting up in bed, propping his weakened body on his tremulous arms.
“You’re not dead, Paul; you’re not, you’re not,” she screamed. “I’ve brought you back, and I am going to hold you here.”