Adventure stories; Islands -- Fiction; Love stories; Shipwrecks -- Fiction
In the next apartment tranquilly slept the disturber, the trespasser in
the fields of memory, the undoer of a long-wrought love. He had tried to
learn the way to her heart, wondering if she cared for him as he had
more than once suspected. In pursuing this hazardous investigation he
had learned nothing, had seen nothing but perfect frankness and
innocence, but had become more deeply interested than he knew until this
night of recapitulation.
One night, two or three after he had thrown off the delirium, he heard
her praying in her room, softly, earnestly. Of that prayer one plea
remained in his memory long after her death: "Oh, God, save the soul of
Grace Vernon. Give to her the fulness of Thy love. If she be still
alive, protect and keep her safe until in Thy goodness she may be
restored to him who mourns for her. Save and bless Hugh Ridgeway."
The days and weeks went by and Hugh grew well and strong. To Tennys he
was not the same Hugh as of old. She perceived a change and wondered.
One day at sundown he sat moodily in front of the temple. She was lying
in the hammock near by. There had been one of the long, and to her
inexplicable, silences. He felt that her eyes were upon him and knew
that they were wistful and perplexed.
Try as he would, he could not keep his own eyes in leash; something
irresistible made him lift them to meet her gaze. For a moment they
looked at each other in a mute search for something neither was able to
describe. He could not hold out against the pleading, troubled,
questioning eyes, bent so solemnly upon his own. The wounds in her
heart, because of his indifference, strange and unaccountable to her,
gaped in those blue orbs.
A tremendous revulsion of feeling took possession of him; what he had
been subduing for weeks gained supremacy in an instant. He half rose to
his feet as if to rush over and crush her in his arms, but a mightier
power than his emotion held him back. That same unseen, mysterious power
compelled him to turn about and almost run from the temple, leaving her
chilled and distressed by his action. The power that checked him
was Memory.
She was deeply hurt by this last impulsive exhibition of disregard. A
bewildering sense of loneliness oppressed her. He despised her! All the
world grew black for her. All the light went out of her heart. He
despised her! There was a faintness in her knees when she essayed to
arise from the hammock. A little cry of anguish left her lips; a hunted,
friendless look came into her eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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