“Nay, I did not mean that. I am but a weak and thoughtless girl and cannot say all that I would, but I love no other, and--and I think I love you dearly.”
She could not have imagined before she came into the room that she would have spoken these words, but the pitiable sight of this wrecked and wasted life filled her with a great flood of compassion, and she spoke almost without thinking of the meaning of her words. Then she bent over and pressed her lips to his forehead. His pallid cheeks flushed a little; the act was so spontaneous and so foreign to her manner, that it carried to his heart the happiness of hope and love. For a time he did not speak.
“I do not know,” he said, “whether this is a part of my dream; it seems too much to believe that this great happiness should have come to me at the end; but I shall believe it true, and carry your love with me whither I am going. It will be a light to the way. The good Saunderson would not let me die when I desired, and you make it hard to go. You see I thought you loved----”
She interrupted him hastily, “I have not thought of love till now. My foolish Victor, you must drive these idle fancies from your head; if I do not love you, I love no one.”
"If this were not the shadow of a dream, the happiness is too great!
"‘Amis, le temps nous presse;
Menageons les moments que le transport nous laisse!´
“Kiss me again, my sweet Dorothy, for the darkness is coming.”
She thought that all was over and the end was come. He lay pale and exhausted, with his hand in hers and his breathing so low and faint that she could not catch the sound of it. There was the shadow of a smile on the open lips; a smile of contentment like that a child smiles while dreaming. She was afraid to move or withdraw her hand, and when Saunderson came into the room she made a gesture of warning.
He came over quietly beside her. “I think,” he said, “ye have given him a more efficacious remedy than any in the pharmacopœia. He is sleeping finely, puir laddie! Ye may leave him now and ye´ll see a change for the better when ye come again. I kenned ye would either kill or cure him, though I thocht ye would do him little harm if ye could help it.”