Yet he was not wholly discouraged, since he never permitted his cult of the veiled idol to overshadow his system of persistent investigation. For the hundredth time, he would endeavor to recall to her mind some sweet episode of his by-gone courtship, or briefly happy wedded life, and for the hundredth time she would reply, with that gentle smile,
"How I wish I could remember a time that must have been so joyous! Ah, my dear Loyd, I fear this poor head of mine is like the Chaldean idols—more clay than gold!"
Certainly her defective recollection of the leading events in the life of Romaine Effingham, previous to her acute illness, lent color to the supposition that Paula Morton might be equally deficient in this regard, in that both personalities were forced to act through the same disabled brain; that is, granting the doubt as to which spirit might be in residence at the time.
Naturally, the reasoning was not logical—not conclusive to a man of Morton's intelligence; and yet with it he was fain to be content.
Of one thing he was satisfied; Paula, reincarnated, could not have loved him more fondly than the beautiful being who had voluntarily abandoned every tie to bind herself to him. Sometimes he wondered, with the chill of death at his heart, how it was all to end; and she, seeming to divine the desperate query, as often as it presented itself, when he was with her, would exclaim,
"What matters it whether I recall the past or not, so long as we are happy in the present, so long as you have my love for the future and for all eternity?"
Paula might have said that in just such words; and the glamor of his fool's paradise encompassed him again. Thus the inexplicable situation, in the natural course of events, grew to a climax.
One afternoon they had been riding for miles through the park-like woodland of the neighborhood, their horses keeping leisurely pace through aisles white with the bloom of dogwood. For a while Morton had entertained his companion with reminiscences of that happy by-gone time which was a reality to him, a pleasing effort of the imagination to her. Her responsiveness was an encouragement to him; and he began at the beginning, closing with the untimely end.
There were tears—tears of genuine sympathy and sorrow—in her limpid eyes as he ceased speaking. So graphic had been his description of that last scene in the cemetery—that end-all to his hope and joy—that she seemed to see the lonely figure beside the open grave, to hear his sobs mingling with the sough of the rainy wind, and to feel the unutterable desolation of that grievous hour.
"Loyd," she said, after a brief pause, her tone suggestive of unshed tears, "you must take me to her grave some day."