"No. Tell me."
"Don't you know your nurse, who has been with you for two weeks? the nurse that you have clung to, and moaned for when your glazed eyes could not see me? Don't you remember how you made me hold you—just so—when the fever-phantoms were chasing you? Surely we are old friends by this time?"
"My Perdita?"
"Why, darling, do you know me, then? Now I shall dare to hope. Oh, thank Heaven!"
"How strange that she should look so joyful at any good befalling me! Am I St. Udo Brand, who was at odds with all the world? or have I been changed into a man with a human heart, to be prized by a noble woman? Is this a revised and improved edition of St. Udo? Have I got out of that bitter, reckless being, and, after ages of toiling in a black, demon-crowded abyss for my sins have I re-entered the world to be simple, and beloved, and happy? O Thou who saved me from annihilation, will that this be true!
"Lady, will you not tell me your name?"
"You called me 'Perdita' when I thought the pest was drifting you from my arms farther—farther, and yet the closer into my heart—call me Perdita still. Oh, my darling, to think that after all I have won you from the gates of death!"
"How long have we loved each other, Perdita? Why do these deep gray eyes hide themselves from me? Why does that flush creep to brow and gentle cheek? What a dear face! what a holy face! I hope that it will beam upon me until I die! What is it that she says?"
"I found you smitten with the plague, and, taking care of you, because there was no one else who had such a right, as the Marplot of your life, you came to think me some one whom you loved, and to call me Perdita. It was one of your fancies."
"I hope it will develop into a reality. I shall pinion your wings, bright seraph, to keep you by me."