“I knew it,” said the wise physician, and he added kindly:
“Cease brooding over this ill that you cannot remedy, for that way madness lies. Forgetfulness is the only panacea for a hopeless grief. You are a musician, they tell me. Give it up for a more practical life. The greatest bard in the world has written that music is the food of love. Thus it only ministers to your sorrow. Cast it aside for a totally different life. If you were strong enough, I should say try manual labor, that in exhausting the body, dulls and wearies the mind, curing its ills of brooding and melancholy. Try the Australian gold fields. Get rich and practical.”
The patient took his advice.
After years of toil and travel, when body and mind were both restored, he had permitted himself to dwell again with yearning memory on the past.
He was aghast when he counted up twelve years since he had come away.
“I must go home to my little Jessie!” he cried.
He had kissed her as a child and gone away—he found her again almost a woman, lying among funeral flowers in her soft, white shroud, but, thank Heaven, with the breath of life faintly heaving her bosom, and dawning in the dark of her tender eyes.
“Jessie, Jessie!” he cried, in a transport of joy, but she knew him not; her glance was dazed and frightened at her grim, unfamiliar surroundings.
It came to him suddenly that if she recovered consciousness fully and found she had been buried alive the shock might be too great for her reason.
She had closed her eyes again with a tired sigh, so he lifted her tenderly from her white satin bed, and bearing her outside, wrapped her carefully in his long, dark overcoat.