II
'When I came to myself,' said Winifred, 'I was in a world as new and strange and wonderful as that in which Christopher Sly found himself when he woke up to his new life in Shakespeare's play.'
She paused. She little thought how my flesh kindled with impatience.
'Yes, Winnie,' I said; 'you are going to tell me how, and where, and when you were restored to life—regained your consciousness, I mean—unless it will too deeply agitate you to tell me.'
'It would not agitate me in the least, Henry, to tell you all about it. But it is a long story, and this seems a strange place in which to tell it, surrounded by these glorious peaks and covered by this roof of sunrise. But do you tell me all about yourself, all about your illness, which seems to have been a dreadful one.'
My story, indeed! What was there in my story that I could or dare tell her? My story would have to be all about herself, and the tragedy of the supposed curse, and the terrible seizures from which she had recovered, and of which she must never know. I set to work to persuade her to tell me all she knew.
At last she yielded, and said, 'Well, I awoke as from a deep sleep, and found myself lying on a couch, with a man's face bending over mine. I could not help exclaiming, "Henry!'"
'Then did he resemble me?' I asked.
'Only in this—that in his eyes there was the expression which has always appealed to me more than any other expression, whether in human eyes or in the eyes of animals. I mean the pleading, yearning expression of loneliness that there was in your eyes when they were the eyes of a little, lame boy who could not get up the gangways without me.'
'Ah, the egotism of love!' I exclaimed. 'You mean, Winnie, that expression which my unlucky eyes had lost when we met upon the sands after our childhood was passed.'