Utterly disbelieving what my friend said in regard to my improved
appearance, I rose from the bed and went to the dressing-table to look
in the mirror and judge for myself. I almost recoiled from my own
reflection, so great was my surprise. The heavy marks under my eyes,
the lines of pain that had been for months deepening in my forehead,
the plaintive droop of the mouth that had given me such an air of
ill-health and anxiety--all were gone as if by magic. I saw a
rose-tinted complexion, a pair of laughing, lustrous eyes, and,
altogether, such a happy, mirthful young face smiled back at me, that I
half doubted whether it was indeed myself I saw.
"There now!" cried Amy in triumph, watching me as I pushed my
clustering hair from my brows, and examined myself more intently. "Did
I not tell you so? The change in you is marvellous! I know what it is.
You have been getting better unconsciously to yourself in this lovely
air and scene, and the long afternoon sleep you've just had has
completed the cure."
I smiled at her enthusiasm, but was forced to admit that she was right
as far as my actual looks went. No one would believe that I was, or
ever had been, ill. In silence I loosened my hair and began to brush it
and put it in order before the mirror, and as I did so my thoughts were
very busy. I remembered distinctly all that had happened in the studio
of Raffaello Cellini, and still more distinctly was I able to recall
every detail of the three dreams that had visited me in my slumber. The
NAME, too, that had been the key-note of them all I also remembered,
but some instinct forbade me to utter it aloud. Once I thought, "Shall
I take a pencil and write it down lest I forget it?" and the same
instinct said "No." Amy's voluble chatter ran on like the sound of a
rippling brook all the time I thus meditated over the occurrences of
the day.
"Say, child!" she exclaimed; "will you go to the dance?"
"Certainly I will, with pleasure," I answered, and indeed I felt as if
I should thoroughly enjoy it.
"Brava! It will be real fun. There are no end of foreign titles coming,
I believe. The Colonel's a bit grumpy about it,--he always is when he
has to wear his dress suit. He just hates it. That man hasn't a
particle of vanity. He looks handsomer in his evening clothes than in
anything else, and yet he doesn't see it. But tell me," and her pretty
face became serious with a true feminine anxiety, "whatever will you
wear? You've brought no ball fixings, have you?"
I finished twisting up the last coil of my hair, and turned and kissed
her affectionately. She was the most sweet-tempered and generous of
women, and she would have placed any one of her elaborate costumes at
my disposal had I expressed the least desire in that direction. I
answered:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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