This theory carried him on till bed-time. Then, he says, he began to wonder what would happen, what Rosamund’s phantasm would do next. Each morning his passion for Pauline had come back again, increased by frustration, and it worked itself up crescendo, towards night. Supposing he had seen Rosamund. He might see her again. He had become suddenly subject to hallucinations. But as long as you knew you were hallucinated you were all right.
So what they agreed to do that night was by way of precaution, in case the thing came again. It might even be sufficient in itself to prevent his seeing anything.
Instead of going in to Pauline he was to get into the room before she did, and she was to come to him there. That, they said, would break the spell. To make him feel even safer he meant to be in bed before Pauline came.
Well, he got into the room all right.
It was when he tried to get into bed that—he saw her (I mean Rosamund).
She was lying there, in his place next the window, her own place, lying in her immature child-like beauty and sleeping, the firm full bow of her mouth softened by sleep. She was perfect in every detail, the lashes of her shut eyelids golden on her white cheeks, the solid gold of her square fringe shining, and the great braided golden rope of her hair flung back on the pillow.
He knelt down by the bed and pressed his forehead into the bedclothes, close to her side. He declared he could feel her breathe.
He stayed there for the twenty minutes Pauline took to undress and come to him. He says the minutes stretched out like hours. Pauline found him still kneeling with his face pressed into the bedclothes. When he got up he staggered.
She asked him what he was doing and why he wasn’t in bed. And he said, “It’s no use. I can’t. I can’t.”
But somehow he couldn’t tell her that Rosamund was there. Rosamund was too sacred; he couldn’t talk about her. He only said: