“I am haunted by a possibility, Aubrey,” continued Reuel. “What if memory suddenly returns? Is it safe to risk the unpleasantness of a public reawakening of her sleeping faculties? I have read of such things.”
Aubrey shrugged his handsome shoulders. “We must risk something for the sake of science; where no one is injured by deception there is no harm done.”
“Now that question has presented itself to me repeatedly lately: Is deception justifiable for any reason? Somehow it haunts me that trouble may come from this. I wish we had told the exact truth about her identity.”
“‘If ’twere done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly’” murmured Aubrey with a sarcastic smile on his face. “How you balk at nothing, Reuel,” he drawled mockingly.
“Oh, call me a fool and done with it, Aubrey: I suppose I am; but one didn’t make one’s self.”
Drives about the snow-clad suburbs of Cambridge with Briggs and Molly, at first helped to brighten the invalid; then came quiet social diversions at which Dianthe was the great attraction.
It was at an afternoon function that Reuel took courage to speak of his love. A dozen men buzzed about “Miss Adams” in the great bay window where Molly had placed Dianthe, her superb beauty set off by a simple toilet. People came and went constantly. Musical girls, generally with gold eyeglasses on æsthetic noses, played grim classical preparations, which have as cheerful an effect on a gay crowd as the perfect, irreproachable skeleton of a bygone beauty might have; or articulate, with cultivation and no voices to speak of, arias which would sap the life of a true child of song to render as the maestro intended.
The grand, majestic voice that had charmed the hearts from thousands of bosoms, was pinioned in the girl’s throat like an imprisoned song-bird. Dianthe’s voice was completely gone along with her memory. But music affected her strangely, and Reuel watched her anxiously.
Her face was a study in its delicate, quickly changing tints, its sparkle of smiles running from the sweet, pure tremor of the lovely mouth to the swift laughter of eyes and voice.
Mindful of her infirmity, Reuel led her to the conservatory to escape the music. She lifted her eyes to his with a curious and angelic light in them. She was conscious that he loved her with his whole most loving heart. She winced under the knowledge, for while she believed in him, depended upon him and gathered strength from his love, what she gave in return was but a slight, cold affection compared with his adoration.