But my poor little fit of hysterics was soon at an end, and though Martin was not permitted to stay more than a moment longer, a mighty wave of happiness flowed over me, such as I had never known before and may never know again.
ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH CHAPTER
I had such a beautiful convalescence. For the major operations of the Great Surgeon an anæsthetic has not yet been found, but within a week I was sitting up again, mutilated, perhaps, but gloriously alive and without the whisper of a cry.
By this time Father Dan had gone back to Ellan (parting from me with a solemn face as he said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace"), and Sister Mildred had obtained permission to give up one of her rooms to me as long as I should need it.
Martin came to see me every day, first for five minutes, then ten, and finally for a quarter and even half an hour. He brought such an atmosphere of health with him, that merely to hold his hand seemed to give me new strength—being so pale and bloodless now that I thought the sun might have shone through me as through a sea-gull.
I could scarcely believe it was not a dream that he was sitting by my side, and sometimes I felt as if I had to touch him to make sure he was there.
How he talked to keep up my spirits! It was nearly always about his expedition (never about me or my experiences, for that seemed a dark scene from which he would not draw the curtain), and I was all a-tremble as I listened to the story of his hair-breadth escapes, though he laughed and made so light of them.
It nearly broke my heart that he had not got down to the Pole; and when he told me that it was the sense of my voice calling to him which had brought him back from the 88th latitude, I felt as if I had been a coward, unworthy of the man who loved me.
Sometimes he talked about baby—he called her "Girlie"—telling a funny story of how he had carried her off from Ilford, where the bricklayer had suddenly conceived such a surprising affection for my child ("what he might go so far as to call a fatherly feeling") that he had been unwilling to part with her until soothed down by a few sovereigns—not to say frightened by a grasp of Martin's iron hand which had nearly broken his wrist.