Only in pity, only in kindness was it, after all?
This one thing is certain, that at rare, irregular intervals, he reaped the fruit of his long devotion—his unswerving, fanatical fidelity—in the renewal of that lost, vanished, unforgettable moment of exquisite joy.
As he sat in his wheeled-chair upon the Promenade of Zeiden, as he lay upon his bed, he would feel, drawing nearer, nearer, the almost bodily presence of a Thought that came from afar. A delicate thrilling ecstasy would penetrate and vivify the paralyzed nerves of his half-dead body, the blood would course in the frozen veins with the ardent vigor of his prime. He would see her, his beloved lady, in a halo of pale moonlight, bending to comfort—descending to bless. Once more he would kneel before her; yet again he would take the beloved hands in his, and draw them upwards to his heart. And their lips would meet, and their looks would mingle, and then.... Oh! then the waking to loneliness, and silence, and pain.
V
He was prone, when the visitations of her almost tangible Thought of him were interrupted by periods of unconsoled waiting, to doubt the actuality of his own experience. That was the worst agony of all, to which the sharpest physical torments were preferable, when in the long, dreary, miserable nights a mocking voice would whisper in his reluctant ear:
“You have been deceived. She never thinks of you. Driveling old dotard! she has long forgotten that night at Scutari. Why in the name of Folly do you cling to your absurd conviction that she loved you then, that she loves you still? You have been deceived, I say. Curse her, blaspheme God, and die!”
“Be silent, be silent!” Dunoisse would say to the invisible owner of the mocking, jeering voice. “If I had the use of this dead right hand to make the sign of the Cross, you would soon be disposed of. For I know who and what you are, very well!”
And he would clamp his lean jaws sternly together, and look up to the carved walnut Crucifix with the Emblems of the Passion, that hung upon the wall beside his bed. And the thin, nagging voice would die away in a titter, and another Voice would whisper in the innermost shrine of his deep heart:
“My son, had I the use of My Arms when I hung upon the cross of Calvary? Yet, nailed thereon beyond the possibility of human movement, did I not pluck the sting from Death, and rise victorious over the Grave, and tread down Satan under My wounded Feet? Answer, My little son?”
And Dunoisse would whisper, falteringly: