Page:Mashi and Other Stories.djvu/46

38 to see me. That was our first meeting. I was reclining opposite the window, so that the blush of the evening sky might temper the pallor of my complexion. When the doctor, coming in, looked up into my face, I put myself into his place, and gazed at myself in imagination. I saw in the glorious evening light that delicate wan face laid like a drooping flower against the soft white pillow, with the unrestrained curls playing over the forehead, and the bashfully lowered eyelids casting a pathetic shade over the whole countenance.

"The doctor, in a tone bashfully low, asked my brother: 'Might I feel her pulse?'

"I put out a tired, well-rounded wrist from beneath the coverlet. 'Ah!' thought I, as I looked on it, 'if only there had been a sapphire bracelet.' I have never before seen a doctor so awkward about feeling a patient's pulse. His fingers trembled as they felt my wrist. He measured the heat of my fever, I gauged the pulse of his heart.— Don't you believe me?"

"Very easily," said I; "the human heart-beat tells its tale."

"After I had been taken ill and restored to health