“And me,” he ventured, “is it the same with regard to me?”
She did not say; she asked, smiling: “Do you remember me when I am away?”
“Yes!” he answered. “As perfectly as if you were with me. I can see you, hear you, feel the touch of your hand, your dress—Good heavens!” he added to himself under his breath. “What am I saying to this poor child!”
In the instinct of escaping from himself he started forward, and she moved with him. Mr. Gerald’s watchful driver followed them with the carriage.
“That is very strange,” she said, lightly. “Is it so with you about everyone?”
“No,” he replied, briefly, almost harshly. He asked, abruptly: “Miss Gerald, are there any times when you know people in their absence?”
“Just after I wake from a nap—yes. But it doesn’t last. That is, it seems to me it doesn’t. I’m not sure.”
As they followed the winding of the pleasant way, with the villas on the slopes above and on the slopes below, she began to talk of them, and to come into that knowledge of each which formed her remembrance of them from former knowledge of them, but which he knew would fade when she passed them.
The next morning, when she came down unwontedly late to breakfast in their pavilion, she called gayly:
“Dr. Lanfear! It is Dr. Lanfear?”