"What is it," I asked, "that you think of?"
"What in the world, my dear, but YOU?"
"Ah, the pride I take in your appreciation doesn't insist on that!
I had so far rather you slept."
"Well, I think also, you know, of this queer business of ours."
I marked the coolness of his firm little hand.
"Of what queer business, Miles?"
"Why, the way you bring me up. And all the rest!"
I fairly held my breath a minute, and even from my glimmering taper
there was light enough to show how he smiled up at me from his pillow.
"What do you mean by all the rest?"
"Oh, you know, you know!"
I could say nothing for a minute, though I felt, as I held
his hand and our eyes continued to meet, that my silence
had all the air of admitting his charge and that nothing
in the whole world of reality was perhaps at that moment
so fabulous as our actual relation. "Certainly you shall go
back to school," I said, "if it be that that troubles you.
But not to the old place--we must find another, a better.
How could I know it did trouble you, this question,
when you never told me so, never spoke of it at all?"
His clear, listening face, framed in its smooth whiteness,
made him for the minute as appealing as some wistful
patient in a children's hospital; and I would have given,
as the resemblance came to me, all I possessed on earth really
to be the nurse or the sister of charity who might have helped
to cure him.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131