“Anne, Anne, it is really you! Thank God! I have prayed that I might see you once more before I died. God is merciful after all!”
He grasped her hands, at first timidly, then eagerly with hungry insatiability. Ran feverish fingers up her arms to her shoulders, attained her face, caressed it with the groping, seeking gestures of a blind man. Then, with a smothered cry, he fell back limply in his chair.
“Alexis, my poor boy!” The gaunt, dry hands in hers, Anne pressed them to her heart.
Cracked lips parted over set teeth, he leaned back, gasping a little.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. “I am still rather weak.”
She was frightened.
“Isn’t there something I can do for you? Some medicine you can take?”
With a feeble movement of the still-graceful hands, he brushed the idea aside. “The sight of you—is all—I want to cure me completely,” he articulated between difficult, hissing breaths. “You are more beautiful than ever, Anne.”
Her smile was wistful. “Dear Alexis, I am getting old now.”
“Old?” He looked genuinely surprised. “I see no difference,” he added with no attempt at compliment. “Oh, Anne, the years, how long they have been in passing!”