“I cannot tell how long you had lain when I found you, but there was nothing left of you save skin and bone: that is more than three months ago.--Your hair was beautiful, nothing else! I have done for it what I could.” “My poor hair!” she said, and brought a great armful of it round from behind her; “--it will be more than a three-months’ care to bring YOU to life again!--I suppose I must thank you, although I cannot say I am grateful!” “There is no need, madam: I would have done the same for any woman--yes, or for any man either!” “How is it my hair is not tangled?” she said, fondling it. “It always drifted in the current.” “How?--What do you mean?” “I could not have brought you to life but by bathing you in the hot river every morning.” She gave a shudder of disgust, and stood for a while with her gaze fixed on the hurrying water. Then she turned to me: “We must understand each other!” she said. “--You have done me the two worst of wrongs--compelled me to live, and put me to shame: neither of them can I pardon!” She raised her left hand, and flung it out as if repelling me. Something ice-cold struck me on the forehead. When I came to myself, I was on the ground, wet and shivering. CHAPTER XX. GONE!--BUT HOW? I rose, and looked around me, dazed at heart. For a moment I could not see her: she was gone, and loneliness had returned like the cloud after the rain! She whom I brought back from the brink of the grave, had fled from me, and left me with desolation! I dared not one moment remain thus hideously alone. Had I indeed done her a wrong? I must devote my life to sharing the burden I had compelled her to resume! I descried her walking swiftly over the grass, away from the river, took one plunge for a farewell restorative, and set out to follow her. The last visit of the white leech, and the blow of the woman, had enfeebled me, but already my strength was reviving, and I kept her in sight without difficulty. “Is this, then, the end?” I said as I went, and my heart brooded a sad song. Her angry, hating eyes haunted me. I could understand her resentment at my having forced life upon her, but how had I further injured her? Why should she loathe me? Could modesty itself be indignant with true service? How should the proudest woman, conscious of my every action, cherish against me the least sense of disgracing wrong? How reverently had I not touched her! As a father his motherless child, I had borne and tended her! Had all my labour, all my despairing hope gone to redeem only ingratitude? “No,” I answered myself; “beauty must have a heart! However profoundly hidden, it must be there! The deeper buried, the stronger and truer will it wake at last in its beautiful grave! To rouse that heart were a better gift to her than the happiest life! It would be to give her a nobler, a higher life!”