“If I could see her again—if our eyes and lips and hands and hearts might meet for even the fraction of a minute, as they used to do, it would be enough. I could wait then patiently through the slow decay of the cycles for the turning of the key in the rusty wards, and the clanking of my broken fetters on the echoing stone, and the burst of light that shall herald my deliverance from prison!...� He lifted his arms above his head. “Oh, my dead love, my dear love! if you are near, as I have sometimes fancied you were, speak to me, touch me—once, only once!...� He waited a moment with closed eyelids and outstretched hands, and then, with a dry sob of baffled longing, stumbled back to his writing table, where the little taper was flickering its last, and dropped into his armchair.
“And other women talk of love to me. What wonder I am cold as ice to them, remembering her!�
It was a scene he had gone through scores upon scores of times—words and gestures varying according to the pathetic inspiration of the moment. He knew that he was pale, and that his eyes were bleared with weeping, and he had a kind of triumph in the knowledge that the pain of retrospective longing and of present loneliness was so poignantly real and keen. Out of the blackness behind his chair at that moment came a slight stir and rustle—not the sough of a vagrant draught stirring among folds of tapestry, but an undeniably human sound. But half displeased with the suspicion that there had been a witness to his agony, he turned—turned and saw Her, the well-beloved of the old, old time, standing very near him.
Beyond a vivid sensation of astonishment, he felt little. He did not tremble with fear—what was there in that perfectly familiar face to fear? He did not fall, stammering with incoherent rapture, at her feet. And yet, a few moments ago, he had felt that for one such sight of her, returned from the Unknowable to comfort him—dragged back from the mysterious Beyond by his strong yearnings—he would have bartered fame, honor, and wealth—submitted his body to unheard-of tortures—shed his blood to the last heart’s drop. He had prayed that a miracle might be performed—and the prayer had been granted. He had longed—desperately longed—to look on her once more—and the longing was satisfied. And he could only stare wide-eyed, and gape with dropped jaw, and say stupidly:
“You?�
For answer she turned her face—in hue, and line, and feature, no one whit altered—so that the light might illumine it fully, and stood so regarding him in silence. Every pore of her seemed to drink in the sight of him;—her lips were parted in breathless expectancy. Every hair of the dark head—dressed in the fashion of fifteen years ago; every fold of the loose dress she wore—a garment he knew again; every lift and fall of her bosom seemed to cry out dumbly to him. There was a half-quenched spark glimmering in each of her deep eyes, that might have wanted only one breath from his mouth to break out into flame. Her hands hung clasped before her. It seemed as if they were only waiting for the signal to unclasp—for the outspread arms to summon him to her heart again. But the signal did not come. He caught a breath, and repeated, dully:
“You! It is you?�
She returned:
“It is I!�
The well-known tones! Recollection upsprang in his heart like a gush of icy waters. For a moment he was thrilled to the center of his being. But the smitten nerve chords ceased to vibrate in another moment, and he rose to offer her a chair.