'Wanda,' he murmured feebly, 'Wanda, you will forgive——'
She kissed him passionately, while her tears fell like rain upon his forehead. She did not hear his words distinctly; she was only alive to the intense joy of his recovered consciousness, of the sound of his voice, of the sense of his safety. She kneeled by his bed, covering his hands with caresses, prodigal of a thousand names of love, given up to an abandonment of terror and of hope which broke down all the serenity and self-command of her habitual temper. She was not even aware of the presence of others. The over-mastering emotions of anguish and of joy filled her soul, and made her seem deaf, indifferent to all living things save one.
Sabran lay motionless. He felt her lips, he heard her voice; he did not look up again, nor did he speak again. He shut his eyes, and slowly remembered all that had passed. Greswold approached him and held his fingers on his wrist, and held a little glass to his mouth. Sabran put it away. 'It is an opiate,' he said feebly; 'I will not have it.'
He was resolute; he closed his teeth, he thrust the calming draught away.
He was thinking to himself: 'Sometimes in unconsciousness one speaks.'
'You are not in great pain?' asked the physician. He made a negative movement of his head. What were the fire and the smart of his lacerated flesh, of his torn muscles, to the torments of his fears, to the agony of his long stifled conscience?
'Do not torment him, let him be still,' she said to the physician; she held his hand in both her own and pressed it to her heart. His languid eyes thanked her, then closed again.
Herr Greswold withdrew to a little distance and waited. It seemed to him strange that a man of the high courage and strong constitution of Sabran should be thus utterly broken down by any wound that was not mortal; should be thus sunk into dejection and apathy, making no effort to raise himself, even to console and reassure his wife. It was not like his careless and gallant temper, his virile and healthful strength.
It was true, the doctor reflected, that he had lost a great amount of blood. Such a loss he knew sometimes affects the heart and shatters the nervous system in many unlooked-for ways. Yet, he thought, there was something beyond this; the attitude and the regard of Egon Vàsàrhely had been unnatural at such an hour of peril. 'When he said just now "forgive," what did he mean?' reflected the old man, whose ear had caught the word which had escaped that of Wanda, who had been only alive to the voice she adored.
The next four days were anxious and terrible. Sabran did not recover as the physician expected that he would, seeing the nature of his wounds and the naturally elastic and sanguine temperament he possessed. He slept little, had considerable fever, woke from the little rest he had, startled, alarmed, bathed in cold sweats; at other times he lay still in an apathy almost comatose, from which all the caresses and entreaties of his wife failed to rouse him. They began to fear that the discharge from the arteries had in some subtle and dangerous manner affected the action of the heart, the composition of the blood, and produced aneurism or pyæmia. 'The hero of Idrac to be prostrated by a mere flesh wound!' thought Herr Greswold in sore perplexity. He sent for a great man of science from Vienna, who, when he came, declared the treatment admirable, the wounds healthy, the heart in a normal state, but added it was evident the nervous system had received a severe shock, the effects of which still remained.