CHAPTER X
ALICE LEE
A young lady was seated in a comfortable armchair. A handsome skin marked like a leopard’s covered her knees and feet, and in her lap was an open volume. She had a great quantity of rich brown hair, a portion of which was plaited in loops upon the back, whilst the rest crowned her head in coils. I had no memory of fair faces with which to compare hers; to my darkened mind it was the first beautiful face I had seen, and as she looked up at me, smiling, with her lips in the act of parting to address me, I gazed at her with wonder and admiration and pity.
Oh, what a sweet, melancholy, exquisitely beautiful face was Alice Lee’s! There was death upon it, and it seemed the more beautiful for that. Her eyes were large, of a soft grey, with a sad expression of appeal in them that was never absent whether she was grave or whether she smiled. The hollows were deep and dark-tinctured, as though they reflected the shadow of a green leaf. Her lineaments were of perfect delicacy: the mouth small and slightly contracted, the teeth brilliant pearls, the cheeks sunken, slightly touched with hectic, and the complexion of the sort of transparency that makes one imagine if a light were held within the cheek the glow of it would shine through the flesh. The brow was faultlessly shaped, and the blue veins showed upon it as in marble. Her hands were cruelly thin and the white fingers were without rings. She was dressed in what now might be called a teagown, and it was easy to see that her attire was wholly dictated by considerations of comfort.
Her smile was full of a sweetness that was made sad by her eyes, as she said, ‘I am so glad to see you. Forgive me for not rising. You see how my mother has swathed my feet. She will be here presently. Where will you sit? There is a chair; bring it close to me. I have been longing to see you! I have heard so much of you from Mrs. Richards.’
I sat down close beside her, and she took my hand and held it whilst she gazed at me.
‘You are kind to wish to see me,’ said I. ‘It is happiness to me to meet you. I am very lonely. I cannot recover my memory. It is terrible to feel, that if I had my memory I would know—I would know—oh, but not to be able to know! Have I a home? Are there persons dear to me waiting for me, and wondering what has become of me? Not to be able to know!’ said I, with my voice sinking into a whisper.
‘Yes, it is terrible,’ she exclaimed gently. ‘But remember these failures of memory do not last. Again and again they occur after severe illnesses. But when is it that the memory does not return?’
‘But when it returns, should it return,’ said I, ‘what may it not tell me that I have lost for ever?’
‘But it will soon return,’ she exclaimed, ‘and things are not lost for ever in a short time. How long is it since you have been without memory? Not yet a fortnight, Mr. McEwan told us. No! our minds would need to be long blank for us to awaken and discover that things dear to us are lost for ever. It is only by death,’ she added, softening her voice and smiling, ‘that things are lost, and not then for ever.’