Never to part, heart bound to heart,
Ever am I, never to say good-by!”
He had never spoken one word to her, never touched her hand, never looked into her soft, dark eyes, as he believed, yet while she had stood there singing in the moonlight, she had lured the heart from his breast because she brought back to him in fancy the dead girl he had loved too late.
He vowed to himself that he would never be parted from this dead love of his, so fair and still. They would float on together side by side until he knew there was no longer any hope of her recovery, then he would fold her in his arms and they would plunge down together to the depths of ocean.
A sudden cry—of commingled hope, surprise, and doubt—shrilled over his blanched lips:
“Ah, am I dreaming, or is this a blissful reality? Did her lips move, her eyelids flutter?”
But it was no dream as he feared, no fancy of an overwrought brain.
A faint tinge of color had crept into the waxen cheek, the eyelids fluttered nervously, the lips parted in a strangling gasp.
A cry of rapture escaped his lips, and at the sound so close to her ears Jessie opened wide her eyes with a dazed look straight upon his face.
There was no recognition at first. It was the startled wonder of a very young infant that looked out upon him—an infant just waking from sleep.