Page:Arrow of Gold.djvu/341

 wistful perhaps and always the supreme expression of her grace. She asked as if nothing had happened:

"What are you thinking of, amigo?"

I turned about. She was lying on her side, tranquil above the smooth flow of time, again closely wrapped up in her fur, her head resting on the old-gold sofa cushion bearing like everything else in that room the decoratively enlaced letters of her monogram; her face a little pale now, with the crimson lobe of her ear under the tawny mist of her loose hair, the lips a little parted, and her glance of melted sapphire level and motionless, darkened by fatigue.

"Can I think of anything but you?" I murmured, taking a seat near the foot of the couch. "Or rather it isn't thinking, it is more like the consciousness of you always being present in me, complete to the last hair, to the faintest shade of expression, and that not only when we are apart but when we are together, alone, as close as this. I see you now lying on this couch but that is only the insensible phantom of the real you that is in me.  And it is the easier for me to feel this because that image which others see and call by your name--how am I to know that it is anything else but an enchanting mist?  You have always eluded me except in one or two moments which seem still more dream-like than the rest.  Since I came into this room you have done nothing to destroy my conviction of your unreality apart from myself.  You haven't offered me your hand to touch.  Is it because you suspect that apart from me you are but a mere phantom, and that you fear to put it to the test?"

One of her hands was under the fur and the other under her cheek. She made no sound. She didn't offer