“And he admired my singing?” said Mona in a questioning tone.
“Yes, and everything pertaining to you. He never tired of rehearsing your perfections, and the doctor tells us he loved you from the very first. He certainly seems most devoted to you. I hope, my dear, that you love him.”
I was now recovered enough to feel some compunctions about listening further to this conversation, but that is not saying that I had any great desire to stop listening. I knew that in Mona’s answer to Zenith’s implied question lay my fate, and my moral doubts were not strong enough to make me do anything to keep it back. It has been said on the earth that people who surreptitiously hear themselves spoken of are never pleased, but things must be quite different inside the moon, for, without a shadow of hesitation and in the sweetest air that ever floated from her lips, came Mona’s answer:
“Love him? Certainly I love him. Why should I not? I loved him when he was here before, and I should be very ungrateful if I did not care a great deal more for him when I know what he has done for me, and that he now lies here suffering for my sake.”
“Oh, Mona,” I said to myself, “if this be suffering, let me never know happiness.”
Zenith began to speak again, when she was interrupted by the opening of a door. I heard someone walk towards me, and then the doctor’s voice broke the silence.
“How is he, Mona? Is there any change?”
“No,” replied my beloved, “he hasn’t stirred nor shown a sign of consciousness. Cannot something more be done for him?”
I was becoming a little hardened in my guilt by this time, and, although my strength seemed now to be returning to me, I decided to keep still yet longer and hear what words of wisdom the doctor would utter on my case.
“I know of nothing that can be done,” he said. “He received no injury except the wound on his head, and that, apparently, is not serious. Time is the great healer in such cases. My chief fear is that when he recovers consciousness we will find his memory is defective, as it was after his plunge into your ocean, Zenith. He will doubtless forget how we ever got into this strange place, and I am almost sure he will not recognize Mona, for that was the direction in which he failed before.”