Haidee looked at me and smiled. “It is very restful here. How is your other patient progressing?”
“Very well, I believe.”
“This is a splendid sanatorium. I had some wonderful dreams in that cedar room.”
“I should like to hear about them. I am curious to know what dreams the room induced,” I answered, with rather too much impressment, I’m afraid.
She leaned her head against the burlapped chair back and lowered her lashes against her cheek. I studied her face. During her illness she seemed to have undergone a subtle transformation. There were lines about her drooping eyes, something cold and almost austere in the expression of her face that I had not noticed before. She seemed farther from me than she had yet seemed—immeasurably remote.
“The dreams were very good dreams—restful dreams.”
“Yes,” I said gently.
“They were dreams of homey things—simple, plain things—and yet there was a zest in them—a repose—a complete forgetfulness.”
“Forgetfulness?”
“Yes. Isn’t forgetfulness the Nirvana of the Hindu? If we remember we may regret. If we have no thought backward or forward, we are blissfully quiescent.”