She wanted to get up and take Helen’s hand and kiss it. She was her David, looking at this woman. She wanted to kiss Helen’s eyes and tell them what it was they would soon see. She forgot the Doctor. She no longer saw him. So sure she was.
She sat there, full of her vision. “Nothing has happened. They need never meet—unless you force it,” was a faint whisper she had no ears for. She must go on in this greater ecstasy than she had ever known. She must make her vision live. Who was she—Cornelia, or David? or was she this sweet fresh girl with the loyal eyes? A great faint ease moved through all her body, as if she were bleeding to death.
She had no words to say to Helen, nor to herself. She longed only to touch her hair, kiss her eyes. David was to touch and to kiss them! Her nerves, that had been taut and clear in the drunkenness of fasting, slumbered now as if they had feasted. Her eyes were dim and saw no further thing. She was indeed swathed warm and happy, like one bleeding away and bathed in her own blood.
But nothing happened. She had no further sense of the room save that it held her up: nor of the easy talk save that her knowledge of it let her float slumberously, in the sea of her blood.
All her blood was outside her. It was no longer a beating surge within the pent walls of her soul. She was emptied of desire and of pain.
She felt that something was to happen: there would come some proof to her vision. She would look upon it sweetly as upon her death.
She awaited her death. She was smiling.
The bell rang. The door opened. David came in....
XIV
DAVID had long intended to see Cornelia. Tom reminded him more than once: reminded him perhaps a bit too often. There was a stubborn touch in David. Something within him seemed to resist his going, and even he knew moodily that the something was kin to Tom’s insistence. He had a way of sallying forth on a Sunday afternoon, resolved to walk an hour and then go to her place: and of forgetting. Until it was too late. He would say: “Next time I will not forget.” At last the “next time” came to be Thanksgiving.