“No! No!”she cried. “For God’s sake, don’t forget your promise. If you do we are lost—I am lost.”
She sprang up and away from me, and with her bare arms crossed over her face and her hands over her ears to shut out all sounds, she ran from the room.
This, sir, was seven weeks ago, and for many days following she would sit and look at me constantly, until, feeling her eyes, I would raise my own to find her face drawn as by a weary period of sleeplessness. At these moments it seemed to me that she was trying to make me understand, just as a faithful dog tries at times to communicate his thoughts by the expectancy, the love, or the pleading shining from his eyes. How much would I now give had I been able to do it!
Within the space of a week she brought to me the suggestion and the plan, which I, being driven to desperation by the impending wreck of our happiness, was mad enough to accept without foreseeing the punishment I would have to suffer through giving for the second time a solemn word of honor.
I think on that morning Julianna was more like her old self than she had been for weeks. Her apartments, though separate from my own, are entered from mine by a narrow door. I had prepared for breakfast,—which we do not have served in our rooms according to the degenerate modern custom,—and then had gone to find her, with the thought in my mind that, whatever she suffered or feared, it was my duty to help her as best I might. I had promised myself to be cheerful, yielding, and as entertaining as possible.
She was sitting on the side of her bed when I came in. The whiteness of the linen and the pale blue of her morning gown served to bring out the delicate color of her skin. I was so delighted with this indication of renewed health that I opened my mouth to express my admiration.
She was quicker than I.
“You find me attractive this morning,” she said with a sad little smile. “I am glad. I wish that I might be attractive to you forever and ever.—I mean my shoulders, my arms, my hands—free from wrinkles or fat or dryness.”
“I’d love you now if you were to assume the shape of a Chinese dragon,” I said seriously, “—or the Sheik of Baalbec.”
The truth was that I had almost forgotten this latter creature, the automaton. Apparently she had, too, for at first a puzzled look came to her eyes, then she smiled up at me with a bit of her own individual coquetry.