"No! Why on earth should I? What else is there to do?"
"What about amusing other people sometimes—by way of change?"
She smiled delightfully.
"How dull! I suppose you mean have a night class for boys, or get up concerts to send ragged children to the seaside."
"Why not? Such things are kindly enough; they do good! They are excellent things for a girl to interest herself in."
"But it wouldn't amuse me at all, Powers! I should be bored to death."
"And you are going to think of nothing but amusing yourself all your life?" he asked slowly.
"Why not?" she answered lightly.
Powers turned his face away in quick vexation, to encounter his mother's disapproving glance focused on Eleanor from a near-by table.
For Lady Fiske, ever ready to further her son's scientific projects, had lent the girl her social patronage, and had tried to blind herself to the arrant selfishness and inconsideration that she everywhere encountered in their intercourse. Between Eleanor and Powers' sister Marian there was almost less in common, for the Eleanor of a month ago had ceased to exist. Beautiful, brilliant, hard, she flitted like a butterfly through the world that Powers had promised her, beating her wings in a mad pursuit of amusement and pleasure, commanding homage and self-sacrifice with a touch as hard as steel.
Powers breathed a long sigh and there was a careworn look in his eyes as he glanced again at the girl in front of him.
Almost immediately Lady Fiske rose, and the women passed out. Trowse stood back among the shadows behind the small table at which he had been sitting, and steadfastly watched the girl of whom he and Marian Fiske had been talking. Prosperity had indeed had a wonderful effect upon Eleanor's looks. The light of perfect health had flushed her delicate cheeks, her figure had filled out; she carried herself with a grace and confidence which took no count of those days of slow torture through which she had passed. Yet there was about her beauty some faint note of peculiarity which had puzzled others before Trowse. He asked himself what it was as she passed out, a queen running the gantlet of a court of admiring eyes, fresh, exquisitely natural, the living embodiment of light-hearted gaiety. When at last the door was closed and the men drew nearer together, he smiled quietly to himself.
"It is like one of those pictures," he murmured, "which come near to breaking the heart of the painter. It is perfect in color and form, it is beautiful—and yet it does not live. There is no background."
He moved to a table nearer the center of the room from which he could watch his host. The heavily shaded lights were kind enough to the faces of the men who sat laughing together over their cigarettes, but Trowse was a keen watcher, and he saw things which were hardly apparent to a casual observer. Powers had altered during the last few months. There were curious lines about his mouth, his eyes were a little sunken, his geniality was a trifle forced. Trowse smiled grimly.
"Conscience!" he muttered to himself. "Powers was never quite free from the sentimentalities of life. What a fool to trifle with such an opportunity!"
He waited for his chance, and moved up presently to his host's table. Powers welcomed him, but without heartiness. It happened that for the moment the two were virtually isolated. Trowse leaned over toward the other.
"How does the great experiment go?" he asked, in a low tone.
Powers visibly flinched. He glanced around him nervously.
"I want to talk to you about her, Trowse," he said. "I can't expect your sympathy, and you can't help me—you nor any other man. But I've got to talk to some one—or go mad."
Trowse nodded with the air of a Sphinx. "Well?"
"She is so horribly changed," Powers said. "Can't you see it? Of course you can't judge because you did not know her before. Trowse, I feel like a man who has created a monster, who has breathed life into some evil thing and let it loose upon the world."
Trowse smiled grimly.
"Personally," he said, "I admit that I am no judge. I understand, however, that society in general scarcely takes the same view of Miss Hardinge. Isn't she supposed to be rather a beauty?"
Powers beat impatiently with his hand upon the table.
"You know that I am not talking about her looks. She's beautiful enough to bewitch every man who comes near her—and she does it."
"It must be a little inconvenient for you," Trowse remarked. "Beyond that, I scarcely see your point."
"Man, you have eyes," Powers exclaimed, with subdued passion. "I have seen you studying her closely when you fancied yourself undisturbed. You can see what I see. She is like a marvelous piece of mechanism. The working of it is perfect, but it isn't human. She is ready to be amused at anything; she is never serious for a single moment. She is only alive upon the sensuous side. Confound it, Trowse, don't look at me like that. She has no soul. There is nothing alight inside."
Trowse broke the short silence.
"I am to take it, then," he said coldly, "that you abandon the experiment. In your present condition it is, I suppose, inevitable. You have lost all influence over her. It would be hopeless to expect her to respond to your will."
"I have already abandoned it," Powers answered. "I curse the day and the thought which made me ever attempt it."
"It is as well, then," Trowse answered, "to give you fair warning. I do not propose to stand by quietly and watch your folly."
"What do you mean?" Powers demanded.
"This: That if you do not carry this thing through—I shall!"
Powers sprang to his feet, his face was dark with passion.
"If you should dare to interfere," he cried, "if you should make the slightest attempt to——"
"Stop!"
The monosyllable came like a pistol-shot, incisive, compelling! There was a breathless silence. Trowse continued, and his words were cold and hard.
"Do not threaten me," he said. "You should know better than that. You should know exactly of how much account I hold my life when it comes to a question of adding to the sum of human knowledge. I shall do as I say. My decision is unalterable."
Powers was a man again.
"It is well to be prepared," he said. "I thank you for your warning. Take mine in return. I have as little fear of death as you, and I think that my love for Eleanor is a passion as strong as your devotion to science. I tell you that I will not have her made the subject of your experiments. I will not have her life or reason imperiled, even to solve the greatest of all mysteries."
Trowse shrugged his shoulders.
"I think," he said, "that we understand one another perfectly."
Their talk fanned a growing distrust of Trowse that Fiske had felt for weeks. He knew the man's hypnotic power, he saw the fascination with which his friend haunted Eleanor's side at gatherings where her clear bright laugh would suddenly cease and a look almost of terror creep into her eyes with Trowse's entrance. Then she forgot every one else and yielded herself to his spell.
Very subtly, very deftly, Trowse pursued his cold-blooded course of experiment while Powers in vain sought to end it. At last he forbade Trowse to enter his home and all went well until returning one day, at an unexpected hour, Powers heard from his library ringing through the house, through closed doors and curtained hallways, the cry of a woman in mortal fear.
He sprang to the door and threw it open. Outside all was silent. There was no repetition of the cry. Then a fainter sound reached him—a low, convulsive moaning as of some creature in pain. He crossed the hall, ran wildly down a long passage, and flung open the door of the little sitting-room which had been given to Eleanor for her own. With his foot upon the threshold he paused for a second. He heard stealthy movements in the hall, the front door softly opened and shut. On the floor before him, white and motionless, Eleanor was lying.
He knew that this was Trowse's work; he ran to the front door with murder in his heart but there was no sight of anyone. Marian, too, from the drawing room had heard the door close softly.
Powers sat with Eleanor's hand in his, watching for her return to consciousness. Her fingers lay in his, cold and passive, her hair was in wild disorder, and her face was still deadly pale. He bent over the closed eyes, and a fierce, passionate desire crept into his heart. If only she might wake up as he had known her first. If only these terrible months of her second existence might be blotted out forever. He was content to have failed in his great experiment. He had no longer any ambition to add to the sum of human knowledge. The memory of Halkar and his patients had become a nightmare to him. Forever he would have been content to remain ignorant of those things which lay now so short a distance beyond. It was an unexpected lesson which he had learned, a strange fever which had wrought so marvelous a transformation in him. The old ideals were dead and buried, life itself had become centered around the girl who lay by his side now, white and inanimate.
At last with a little shiver she opened her eyes.
Physically, Eleanor became at that time a puzzle both to Powers and to the physician whom he called in to attend upon her. From an almost animal perfection of health, she passed after her recovery from that prolonged fainting fit into a state of nervous prostration, the more remarkable from its contrast to her former robustness. She lost her color, her light gracefulness of movement, her brilliant gaiety of manner. She moved about listlessly, with pallid cheeks, and always with a strange gleam in her eyes—of expectancy, mingled with apprehension.
"It is so absurd—so horrible—to look back—and to remember nothing," she said one day, with a little break in her voice. "I want to see some one who really belongs to me—my father, or my uncle, or some one. Perhaps that would help me—to remember."
"My dear," Powers said, "I am afraid that you would never be able to find your father. He is in China on a secret mission for the Government. That is why he cannot write or receive letters. You must be content with us for a little longer. We may hear from your uncle any day."
There was a dead silence. In her face were traces of a strange new nervousness.
"If I could get away—a long distance away!" Eleanor exclaimed, with a sudden tremulous emotion. "If only I could."
Powers took one of her restless hands in his.
"Eleanor," he said, "we have been talking about taking you to a little place we have in Lincolnshire, close to the sea. There will be only Marian and I. You shall be alone as much as you choose. No one shall come near you whom you do not care to see."
She looked at him almost wistfully.
"To-morrow!" she repeated.
They left London early the next morning and Eleanor, with a face that was almost haggard leaned wearily back in the train and scarcely spoke during the entire trip.
Toward the end of dinner, on the evening of their arrival, Powers threw open the French windows and let in the deep music of the sea. She started to her feet with a strange little cry.
"Hark!"
It was the first sign of her awakening interest in life.
"The tide is coming in," Powers said. "You see the beach is just below the gardens."
She stepped through the window and crossed the lawn. From there a winding path led down to the beach. She never paused until she stood upon the shingle, with her pale, rapt face turned seaward. Powers followed noiselessly close behind. Almost to their feet, the long waves came thundering in, weird and ghostlike. She stood like a statue, her lips parted, her bosom rising and falling quickly under her dinner-gown.
"Listen," she murmured, "it is the old cry, unending, everlasting. Where have I heard it before? Oh, tell me! Tell me!"
"I cannot," he answered. "I would that I could!"
She paid no more attention to him. She stood with her face turned seaward, listening—always listening. He went back to the house and brought wraps. She let him adjust them without thanks or remark. Soon the gathering darkness blotted out everything except the faint phosphorescent light on the tops of the breaking waves.
"Come," he said at last, touching her arm gently, "it is late, and we have left Marian alone."
She did not move, but soon Marian came out and called to them. Then she permitted him to lead her slowly toward the house, pausing every now and then to listen. A faint moon was shining through a misty sky, and he caught a glimpse of her face, which startled him. It was as though she were listening to voices which he could not hear. There was the breath of another world about her.
"Are you afraid of being dull here?" he asked. "You see, we have no neighbors, and the village is a mile away."
She smiled curiously.
"There is never any dullness," she said, "where that is!"
He was prepared for changes in her, but this sudden transition from a materialism almost gross was staggering. It was only a few weeks ago that he had watched in vain for a single sign of feeling in her face. Now she was pale almost to the lips with emotion.
The next afternoon she called to him. He sprang up and found her standing in the open window dressed for walking. Even in his first rapid glance he saw a wonderful change in her appearance. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes bright. Once more she carried herself with the old lightsome grace. She called to him gaily.
"Come for a walk, Powers! I am going to take you somewhere."
He caught up his stick and hat, and followed her. Then he saw that the color in her cheeks was not wholly natural. She was nervous and excited.
"Why not inland, Eleanor?" he suggested. "Let us go to Turton Woods."
She seemed scarcely to have heard him. Already she was well on her way shoreward.
He caught her up in a few strides. The tide had gone down, and they walked dry-footed along the road. Above their heads the larks were singing, and in their faces the freshening sea wind blew.
Her head was thrown back, her lips were parted. She drank in the breeze as though it were wine.
"This is the wind which Ulric and his men always loved," she murmured. "A wind from the north to the shore. Can't you feel the sting of the Iceland snows?"
"Not I?" he answered, laughing. "To me it is soft and warm enough. But then, you know, I have no imagination."
"Powers," she said suddenly, "I want to ask you a question. Is there any fear of my going mad?"
He started violently.
"Certainly not!" he answered. "Why do you ask me such a question?"
"I know that I am not like other girls," she said wistfully. "I cannot remember my father, or my life in India, or the voyage. When I try to think about these things my head plays me such strange tricks. I cannot remember where I was, or what I was doing a year ago—but——"
"Go on. Tell me exactly how you feel," he said encouragingly. "It will help me to put you right."
"But behind all that," she continued hesitatingly, "I seem to remember many strange things—things which must have happened a long, long time ago. They are not things I have been told about, or read of! I can remember them. They must have happened to me. Powers, it makes me afraid."
He looked at her with ill-concealed excitement.
"It is the sea," she murmured, "which seems always to be reminding me of things."
She came a little closer to him. His heart beat fiercely. Her eyes sought his—the appeal of the weak to the strong. He crushed down his joy—yet it shone in his face, trembled in his tone.
"Shall I ever be like other girls?"
He took her hands in his. She yielded them readily, but they were cold as ice.
"I am perfectly sure of it," he declared. "You must trust in me and be patient."
She held his hands tightly as though wrung with a sudden emotion—an emotion which he realized was one of fear alone.
"Powers," she begged, "will you lock my door at night? Lock all the doors in the house."
"You have been walking in your sleep!" he said. "Tell me about it. You must tell me everything, Eleanor, if I am to succeed."
"Not in my sleep," she answered, in a low tone, "but at night, when everything is quiet, the sea calls and calls, and I cannot rest. I woke suddenly this morning at three o'clock, and I went out. Powers, as I walked and listened, the wind and the sea came to me like old friends. I remembered many strange things. I remembered people whose graves the sea has stolen from the land ages ago. I was back in those days myself, Powers. I sang their songs, my heart beat with their joys."
Powers was silent. It had come, then, after all—the great awakening. He looked at her with a curiosity almost reverent. His voice trembled.
"Tell me, of those days," he begged.
She shook her head impatiently.
"They came back to me then," she said, "in the twilight, when the whole world slept, and only the sea kept calling to me. Now they are blotted out. I am afraid to think of them. Powers, help me to forget."
For a moment his love was in the balance against that unconquerable thirst for knowledge which had seemed to him once the whole aim of life. He must look, if only for a second, into that land beyond.
"Eleanor," he said thickly, "tell me what you remembered of those days. Sing me that song. You need not be afraid. It is no sign of madness, this!"
She burst into tears, stretched out her hands—the impulsive gesture of a child, and the desire of his life became suddenly a faint thing beside his great love of her. He drew her tenderly to him.
"Eleanor," he whispered, "you know that I love you. Give yourself to me, to guard and to keep. You are the first woman who has ever come into my life. You will be the last. I will keep you from all harm. I will help you stifle those evil memories. You shall be my wife, and I will teach you that love is the greatest and the sweetest thing in the world."
He held her from him and looked anxiously into her face. There was scant comfort there for him.
"When you talk like that," she murmured, "I feel that I must be different from all other people. You expect something from me which I know nothing about. I do not feel toward you in the least like you say you feel toward me. Why is it?"
"It will come!" he declared confidently. "I am sure of it. In the future it must come."
She moved away and Powers watched her wistfully. She was thinner than he had ever known her, and of that wonderful fresh beauty which had taken London by storm there remained but few traces. Yet to him there came at that moment a wonderful impulse of love. The wistfulness which shone in her eyes, the wasted cheeks, the pallor of her once beautiful complexion, seemed in a sense to have spiritualized her. The child whose frank sensuousness had horrified him seemed to have passed away.
Once more she was the girl whom he had met on the wet pavement of the city, brave and womanly, although in desperate straits—the woman who, however unexpectedly, had first found her way to his heart. Never, even in those days when her beauty had been unrivaled, and her train of admirers a constant source of embarrassment, had she seemed to him more to be desired than at that moment.
As she walked she began to sing softly and to herself. He wondered at the strange chanting tune and at the time-forgotten words. And as she sang the color brightened her cheeks, and the wakening breezes blew the hair about her face.
A great sea-bird, disturbed by her voice, rose from the ditch below with a flapping of wings and drifted away seaward.
"It is only a bird," she said. "If you had seen as many of them as I have, you would not heed them. I have seen them in droves, when their wings darkened the sky, and I have heard them calling to one another down the north wind. Where have you lived all your life that you know nothing of these things?"
She laughed softly.
"Come and sit with me on the sand-hill there," she said, "and I will tell you about the sea."
He followed her. Almost to their feet the long waves made harsh music upon the shingle.
"Poor man," she said softly. "Listen, have you never heard this when the north wind blows?"
And again she sang that wonderful song. When her voice died away he shook his head.
"No, I have never heard that," he said. "It is very beautiful. I have never heard the music, and I do not know what language it is."
She smiled.
"It is the song of Ulric, the Dane," she told him. "Many a time he has sung it to me as we stood on the prow of his ship, and the spray broke over our heads and leaped high into the sunshine. He sang it to me when the cold sleet stung our cheeks, and the wind came rushing about us, and we heard no longer the swirl of the oars. He sang it to me in the darkness, while we stole into the harbor, and below his men sharpened their swords and fitted their spear-heads."
"Who was Ulric?" he asked tentatively.
"Ulric was my lover," she answered. "Every night, when the tide comes in, he calls to me, but I do not know where he is. I do not think that I shall ever see him any more."
"Tell me about him," he begged.
Her eyes shone.
"He was tall and strong like a god," she answered, "with yellow hair and beard, and wonderful blue eyes. No man save he could wield his sword, and in battle men gave way before him as the corn falls before the scythe. And because he loved me he brought me here with him from over the seas. I sat in the ship, while he and his men fought on the land. And at night, when the villages were burning, back came my lover with skins and ornaments, corn and wine, and we were all happy together."
He watched her still with fascinated eyes.
"Do you mean that you remember these things?" he asked. "You have read about them in a book."
"A book!" she exclaimed scornfully. "What need have I of books to tell me of these things?—I, to whom their happening was but as yesterday. Only then my name was Hildegarde, and now they call me Eleanor."
"But this all happened very long ago," he protested. "You are only twenty-five, you know. It isn't possible for you to remember."
She eyed him with tolerant scorn.
"You foolish man!" she exclaimed. "You do not understand. The days when I was Hildegarde, and Ulric was my lover, are as clear to me as moonlight. I could tell you many things of those days if you cared to listen—how Ulric slew his brother because he lifted his eyes to me, and how once we were both taken prisoners by the King of East Mercia, and Ulric burst his bonds, the strongest they could forge, and slew the guards one by one.
"It was just such a dawn as this when we came running to the seashore, and when we smelled the salt wind how we laughed in one another's faces for the joy of our freedom. Behind the Britons were staggering with fatigue—for Ulric ran like a god, and when I was weary he caught me up by the waist, and I lay upon his shoulder, and never troubled him. Or I could tell you how he slew his chief captain because one night he whispered in my ear."
He clasped her fingers in his. They were hot and feverish.
"Shall we turn now, dear?" he said. "We have walked far enough in this sun. You shall tell me more of Ulric another day."
They had left the shore, but she turned to the right along a low range of sand-hills.
"Does this lead to any place in particular?" he asked.
"It leads to Rayston Church," she answered. "We are going there."
He looked at her in quick surprise.
"How did you know that?" he asked. "I have heard of a place called Rayston, but there is no church there."
She laughed softly.
"I will show you where it stood, then," she answered. "I will show you, too, what sort of man Ulric was. It was the last of our raids. We had twelve ships, and nearly five hundred men, and everywhere the people fled without fighting, for no one could stand against Ulric and his men. For once I, too, was allowed to land, for we knew that our coming was unexpected, and there was no fear of defeat. Village by village they plundered, and sacked, and burned. Night by night we made great fires, by which the ships followed us along the coast, and I sang to them till the embers burned low."
She stopped short with a little cry, and pointed inland. To their left was a plowed field, and in the top corner were three grass and ivy-covered stone walls of immense thickness.
"See," she cried, "there stood Rayston Church! When we came here an old man met us waving a green bough. He told Ulric that all the folk had fled, and that their dwellings might be spared they had collected all their treasures and belongings and stored them in the church. Ulric believed him, and they hastened to the church, all shouting and singing together for joy of such an easy victory. But when they were within a dozen yards of the building there came suddenly upon them from the slit apertures and the tower a cloud of poisoned arrows, and Ulric lost more men in those few minutes than ever in his life before. I was far away behind, but I saw all. I saw Ulric raise his great two-edged sword and cut down to the ground the old man who had led them there. I saw them drag the trunk of a tree to the church door and batter it in, and not one Briton escaped. Ask that old man, Powers, what they have found in the fields here."
Powers called a laborer digging on a potato-patch close at hand.
"What is the name of that ruin?" he asked.
The man surveyed it doubtfully.
"There ain't any one as rightly knows, sir," he admitted. "Our vicar has looked at the walls, and reckoned it must have been a church."
"Have any Danish trophies ever been found about here?"
The old man smiled.
"You see this field, sir?" he answered. "I've heard my grandfather say that when he used to plow that one day it must have been sown with human bones. There's an old horn mug been found here, too, that they say, from the shape of it, must have belonged to some foreigners. It's in the British Museum in London."
Powers threw him a shilling and turned away with Eleanor.
"You have been here before," he said, in a low tone.
"Never since I came with Ulric," she answered dreamily, "and that must have been a very, very long time ago. There were no houses in those days, nor any fields. Yet the land is the same, the land and the sea. They do not change."
They sat down on a sandy knoll. Powers took her hand in his.
"Dear," he said softly, "it is not well for you to dwell upon these fancies. Try and think instead of the future—our future.
"Fancies," she repeated scornfully. "They are not fancies. They are memories."
"Call them what you will, dear," he said, "but let them lie. They belong to a dead past. It is the future which concerns us."
She drew a little closer to him. For the first time he felt his pressure upon her fingers returned.
It seemed to him as she sat there, with quivering lips, that it was indeed the weary shop-girl of the Edgware Road who was with him once more. There was a light in her eyes as of some new understanding.
A great yearning swept over Powers with the memory of that rain-swept, wind-tossed bay. All the scientific aspirations, the quiet culture, and the easy, pleasant days of sybaritical studentship which had filled his life were suddenly things of the past. His passionate love for Eleanor was predominant. He was like a man afflicted with a strange fever of unknown origin, which no physician could prescribe for, and which he himself was powerless to resist.
In his room that night he sat under his student's lamp into the small hours, writing—writing....
It was the last chance and he was going to stake his all upon it. He was appealing to the old German professor of his student days, the man who more than any other could aid him at this time.
A week later he took Eleanor back to London and placed her in the great specialist's hands. And then followed weary days and nights of anxious waiting when all but hope seemed fled. Then came a day when his library door opened softly and the great German doctor looked at Powers benevolently through his double glasses.
"My young friend," he said, "the work is finished. My last visit to this most interesting of patients has been paid. I await now only the confirmation of our theories."
Powers, though outwardly cool, was trembling with excitement.
"I can go to her?" he asked. "You recommend it? The moment has arrived?"
"It has arrived," Herr Rauchen affirmed. "She is strong enough to bear your presence—to talk in moderation. I will await here the result. It is an experiment the most interesting of any I have ever known."
Powers moved toward the door, but the professor called him back.
"My young friend," he said, "one moment. There's no hurry. I would ask a question."
"Well?"
"You say the room is the same, the nurse is the same. Good! Have you the clothes she arrived in?"
"They are there in full view," Powers answered. "She has come back to consciousness among precisely the same surroundings as when she first came to me eight months ago."
"Very good indeed," the professor declared. "Now you shall go to her. Meanwhile, I wait for you here."
Once more Powers hesitated, with his foot upon the threshold of her room. It seemed so short a time ago since he stood there before on his way to his first interview with her since his great experiment. But his interest was no longer scientific. He knew very well that the next few minutes must make or mar his life.
The professor had given him hope; their theories had been based upon a sound basis. But the issue was the greatest he had ever put to the test. With it was bound up the whole welfare of the woman he loved. He entered the room without his usual confidence. Yet the moment he saw her his heart beat with passionate hope.
She was lying upon a sofa, her hair loosely coiled upon the top of her head, clad in a becoming morning wrap, white with streaming ribbons. At the sound of the opening door she turned her head, and she greeted him with a faint smile. As their eyes met he felt once more that passionate thrill of hope. For the change in her face was manifest. This was neither the brilliantly beautiful but soulless child who had taken London by storm, nor the mystic, moody girl, hovering ever on the brink of insanity, who had sung to him upon the seashore. It was the Eleanor of his earlier knowledge, who greeted him now half-shyly, yet with a certain mischievous look in her clear soft eyes.
"So, after all," she murmured, looking up at him, "I am a disappointment. The great experiment is a failure. I really haven't forgotten a single thing."
"Hang the experiment!" he declared cheerfully. "I lost all interest in that long ago. All that I have been anxious for has been your recovery."
"I am so glad," she said. "I was afraid you would be terribly disappointed. It really isn't my fault, is it?"
"Not in the least," he assured her heartily. "You were an excellent subject. I suppose," he added, struggling to keep the anxiety out of his tone, "there is no doubt about the failure of it?"
"Not the slightest. My memory feels particularly clear. You can cross-examine me if you like."
"Well, I will ask you a few questions," he said. "Tell me your last recollection before you came to yourself."
She answered him readily.
"I came to you here," she said, "and told you that I was dismissed from Bearmain's. I heard your proposals and agreed to them. You sent for a nurse and you gave me chloroform here. The very last thing in my mind is that you walked to the window, and looked at your watch just before I went off."
He drew a quick breath—it sounded almost a gasp. "It is wonderful!" he exclaimed.
"Everything before that day—my miserable life at Bearmain's, your kindness to me, and our little jaunts together," she said, "I can remember quite clearly. I am sorry to wound your vanity, but your experiment has been shockingly unsuccessful."
He smiled.
"It was a very foolish one," he declared. "I have been terribly worried about you."
Their eyes met for a moment, and a spot of color burned in her cheeks.
"You need not have worried," she said softly. "You made it all quite clear to me before I consented. I knew the risk I ran."
He braced himself up for the final test.
"You have been unconscious for a very long time," he said. "Often I used to listen to you talking to yourself. You don't mind, do you? You see it was part of the experiment."
"Of course not," she answered. "Was I very foolish?"
"You spoke of a lot of things which, of course, I did not understand," he said. "For instance, there was Ulric. Who was he?"
"Ulric?" she repeated the name wonderingly. There was no comprehension in her face.
"Are you sure of the name?" she asked. "I never heard it in my life before."
He smothered his agitation with a strange laugh.
"Perhaps," he suggested, "Ulric was one of your companions when you were a child."
"Perhaps," she assented. "Yet the name is so uncommon that I think I should have remembered it."
"Well," he continued, "there was a person of the name of Trowse—an enemy, I should think, or some one you disliked. What of him?"
Again the blankness of non-comprehension. She shook her head at him and smiled.
"Do you know," she said, "I shall believe soon that it is you who have been raving. Trowse! Ulric! I never heard such names in my life. Tell me, was there any one else?"
"You spoke of my mother and sister as though you knew them," he said.
She shook her head.
"I saw them with you in a box at the theater one night, you know," she reminded him.
He was watching her closely, and permitted himself a little sigh of relief. She was looking out of the window at the faint April sunshine which was doing its best to brighten the dull afternoon.
A few days later Powers made his way to her room in the twilight. It was easy to see that her recovery was now an assured thing. She was standing by the window when he entered, and he fancied for the first time that she greeted him a little nervously.
"Your mother and sister have been to see me, Sir Powers," she said. "Wasn't it delightful of them?"
"Well, I don't know," he answered. "It seems to me a very natural thing for them to do. I hope you liked my mother, Eleanor."
"How could any one help it?" she said simply. "Your sister was very kind, too. They spoke as though—I was to go and stay with them—but——"
"Well?" he said.
She was very nervous under his gaze. All her words took flight with her long, carefully planned idea of a livelihood that she had wanted to consult him about.
The feeling in his eyes was unmistakable. A delicate flush stole into her cheeks and she closed her eyes. In the strong light he noticed more clearly the fragility of her appearance. He rose hastily.
"Eleanor," he said, "do not think that I expect too much from you now. But I love you very dearly, and to-day I ask from you only the right to give you my name, so that I may protect you from all evil, whensoever it may come. For the rest I am content to wait."
The hot color burned in her cheeks. She looked at him confused—reproachful.
"But you never seemed as though you cared at all!" she faltered. "I don't understand."
He caught her to him. His eyes were bright, his face hungry with the love of her.
"Dear!" he cried, "look at me. What does it matter when first I cared for you? Look at me now—listen. I love you, Eleanor! You believe me! You must!"
She laughed as she leaned toward him.
"It is so easy," she murmured, "to believe when one wants to—very much."