"Oh yes," he replied; and completed his examination, which convinced him that there was really nothing the matter with her, and more than ever puzzled him as to why he had been fetched, since she did not appear to be a timid woman. "You must rest a while, and I'll send something," he said.
"Oh, I forgot," she returned. "Look here." And she showed him a little scrape on her arm--the full round arm that was exposed.
"Put some court-plaster on that, please."
He obeyed. "And now," she said, "before you go I want to put a question to you. Sit round there in front of me, on that low chair, and bring the candles, or one, to the little table. Do you smoke? Yes? That's right--I am learning. Take one of these; and here's a light." She threw a matchbox across.
Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first time afforded him a full view of her face. "How many years have passed since first we met!" she resumed, in a voice which she mainly endeavored to maintain at its former pitch of composure, and eying him with daring bashfulness.
"WE met, do you say?"
She nodded. "I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you were passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized you as one I had met in my girlhood. Do you remember, when you were studying at Heidelberg, an English family that was staying there, who used to walk--"
"And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair--ah, I see it before my eyes!--who lost her gloves on the Great Terrace--who was going back in the dusk to find them--to whom I said, 'I'll go for them,' and you said, 'Oh, they are not worth coming all the way up again for.' I DO remember, and how very long we stayed talking there! I went next morning while the dew was on the grass: there they lay--the little fingers sticking out damp and thin. I see them now! I picked them up, and then--"
"Well?"
"I kissed them," he rejoined, rather shamefacedly.
"But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?"
"Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I wondered how I could make the most of my trouvaille, and decided that I would call at your hotel with them that afternoon. It rained, and I waited till next day. I called, and you were gone."
"Yes," answered she, with dry melancholy. "My mother, knowing my disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go falling in love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away to Baden. As it is all over and past I'll tell you one thing: I should have sent you a line passing warm had I known your name.
That name I never knew till my maid said, as you passed up the hotel stairs a month ago, 'There's Dr. Fitzpiers.'"
"Good Heaven!" said Fitzpiers, musingly. "How the time comes back to me! The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot. When I found that you really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed down my back. I went up to where you had stood when I last saw you---I flung myself on the grass, and--being not much more than a boy--my eyes were literally blinded with tears. Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice."
"For how long?"
"Oh--ever so long. Days and days."
"Days and days! ONLY days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days and days!"
"But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two.
It was not a full-blown love--it was the merest bud--red, fresh, vivid, but small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in embryo. It never matured."
"So much the better, perhaps."
"Perhaps. But see how powerless is the human will against predestination. We were prevented meeting; we have met. One feature of the case remains the same amid many changes. You are still rich, and I am still poor. Better than that, you have (judging by your last remark) outgrown the foolish, impulsive passions of your early girl-hood. I have not outgrown mine."