"Hush! hush! we have talked long enough; go to sleep."
"In yours arms, then Perdita."
She gathers him to her heart. Recklessly she strains him close while yet she may, heedless of the lonely days when heart and soul will hunger gnawingly for this blessed moment.
And so time fares on with this Brand which has been plucked from the burning.
Little by little he takes back to him life and strength; little by little he spells out this strange, sweet, new life, and analyzes it, and basks in the lambent sunshine. Not little by little grows his love for the Perdita of his fever dreams; she has taken the tide at its lowest ebb, and it has swept her into his deep, strong heart, which nevermore can shut her out.
He watches her beaming eyes with wistful constancy; he clings to her garments; he kisses her light hands, which touch him in gentle ministrations. The hard man is conquered, and by a woman.
But when he grows fearful that, after all, she may be wearying of this toil and care for him; when, with anxious eyes, he looks into the future, and pictures life without this gentle comforter, he almost wishes that health would turn her back on him forever, so that he might ever have Perdita; and he worries himself into continual fevers, which prove a great drawback to his convalescence.
She, also, has her secret load of anxiety. A crisis is approaching which she may not longer stave off. She must make herself known anon, and finish her duty with regard to him, and go away; and oh! heaven knows how she is to turn her back upon this great passion of her life, and him!
In her perfection of humility, she never hopes for reward for these great services of hers; she counts them but a feeble recompense for the evil she—his Marplot and ruin—has wrought him, which no recompense can atone for. She has not had the vanity to probe into his heart and weigh his gratitude toward her, or to count upon it for a moment. His daily evidences of love are to her but the wayward fancy of an invalid, which time and strength will sweep away, as surely as the ripple would blot her reflection from yonder smooth lagoon.
And at last the burden grows so heavy on the heart of each, that he, the least patient, breaks silence, and recklessly put his hand to the wheel which may revolve and crush him.