Page:The story of Saville - told in numbers.djvu/80

 They were sitting the width of the room apart  and she had been reading from “Maud,” When sudden he spoke in a voice at once exultant and deeply awed, “Saville,—dear heart! I have not dared to say what for days I have guessed— That God in His infinite mercy and wisdom and love accounteth it best To relume the lamps in their sockets, to summon the long-fled guest, To roll the hideous weight away that years on my life hath pressed,— There, as I point, is a grayness—a glimmer—a dark less Cimmerian profound,— Am I right? Is it haply a glimpse through a curtainless casement of snow-covered ground? Here on the left is a lurid lifting of shadow,—it almost is red,— Is it only a sulphurous devil within, or the ruddy clear fire instead? I scarcely dare hope,—yet I have remembered all of this year, Saville, That the day we met you promised my sight—But what is it, love? Are you ill— Are you gone from the room that I meet with alone this silence so strange and so chill? Why, I looked for a tempest of laughter and doubts, and for floods of rejoicing tears,— 76