But no one spoke of her, no one seemed to remember her existence. It seemed to Ronald that they were cruel to be so forgetful. He had placed a seal upon his own lips, but he would have trembled with pleasure if anyone else had even named her name.
Day by day there began to be some slight change in Ronald, faint at first, but growing more and more noticeable. The doctors began to have hopes of him.
They thought it more than likely he would pull through safely now. Yet they owned that there would long be a weakness in that wounded lung, and they strenuously recommended a sea voyage to him when he should be sufficiently recovered to undertake it.
"A sea voyage—a winter in Italy," said Doctor Sanborn, "would build up your constitution—make a new man of you."
"And lend new wings to your soaring fancy," laughed Doctor Leslie, who had found out that Ronald was a poet. "I should say that beautiful, dreamy Italy, is the true home of the poetic muse."
Ronald fell in with the plan at once, the more eagerly that he felt it would be best to put the whole width of the world between himself and Jaquelina. It seemed to him that if he were farther away that he must cease to be tormented by that passionate yearning for the lost one that haunted him now forever.
But there were weary days of lingering pain and slow convalescence to be passed over before that sea voyage could be undertaken. The red and gold of the October leaves blew in drifts across the lawn and in the wood before he was ever out of his room. Meanwhile his thoughts—in spite of himself—were ever busy with Jaquelina. He pictured her to himself many times daily. He wondered how she spent her time; he wondered if she had gone away to teach as she had meant to do before their evanescent dream of happiness. That fancy pained him.
It retarded his convalescence. It kept him restless and wakeful at night. He learned the full meaning of the poet's plaints:
"When we most need rest, and the perfect sleep,
Some hand will reach from the dark, and keep
The curtains drawn and the pillows tossed
Like a tide of foam, and one will say
At night—Oh, Heaven, that it were day!
And one by night through the misty tears
Will say—Oh, Heaven, the days are years,
And I would to Heaven that the waves were crossed!"