Brandon looked at her fixedly for a long time without speaking. She placed her cool hand on his forehead. His eyes closed as though there were a magnetic power in her touch. After a while, as she removed her hand, he opened his eyes again. He took her hand and held it fervently to his lips. “I know,” said he, in a low, dreamy voice, “who you are, and who I am—but nothing more. I know that I have lost all memory; that there has been some past life of great sorrow; but I can not think what that sorrow is—I know that there has been some misfortune, but I can not remember what.”
Beatrice smiled sadly. “It will all come to you in time.”
“At first when I waked,” he murmured, “and looked around on this scene, I thought that I had at last entered the spirit-world, and that you had come with me; and I felt a deep joy that I can never express. But I see, and I know now, that I am yet on the earth. Though what shore of all the earth this is, or how I got here, I know not.”
“You must sleep,” said she, gently.
“And you—you—you,” he murmured, with indescribable intensity—“you, companion, preserver, guardian angel—I feel as though, if I were not a man, I could weep my life out at your feet.”
“Do not weep,” said she, calmly. “The time for tears may yet come; but it is not now.”
He looked at her, long, earnestly, and inquiringly, still holding her hand, which he had pressed to his lips. An unutterable longing to ask something was evident; but it was checked by a painful embarrassment.
“I know nothing but this,” said he at last, “that I have felt as though sailing for years over infinite seas. Wave after wave has been impelling us on. A Hindu servant guided the boat. But I lay weak, with my head supported by you, and your arms around me. Yet, of all the days and all the years that ever I have known, these were supreme, for all the time was one long ecstasy. And now, if there is sorrow before me,” he concluded, “I will meet it resignedly, for I have had my heaven already.”
“You have sailed over seas,” said she, sadly; “but I was the helpless one, and you saved me from death.”
“And are you—to me—what I thought?” he asked, with painful vehemence and imploring eyes.