“Oh! stranger, you are speaking in riddles. If your comrade is wounded in the heart, either by a bullet or an arrow—”
“It is an arrow.”
“Then he must die: it will be impossible for any one to save him.”
“Not impossible for you. You can extract the arrow—you can save him!”
Mystified by the metaphor, for some moments she remained gazing at me in silence—her large antelope eyes interrogating me in the midst of her astonishment. So lovely were those eyes, that had their irides been blue instead of brown, I might have fancied they were Lilian’s! In all but colour, they looked exactly like hers—as I had once seen them. Spell-bound by the resemblance, I gazed back into them without speaking—so earnestly and so long, that she might easily have mistaken my meaning. Perhaps she did so: for her glance fell; and the circle of crimson suffusion upon her cheeks seemed slightly to extend its circumference, at the same time that it turned deeper in hue.
“Pardon me!” said I, “for what may appear unmannerly. I was gazing at a resemblance.”
“A resemblance?”
“Yes! one that recalls the sweetest hour of my life.”
“I remind you of some one, then?”
“Ay—truly.”