Full understanding we need never ask; the

solution, I am convinced, is scarcely obtainable in this world. The

message, however, was incomplete because the breath that framed it into

broken words failed suddenly; the heart, so strangely given into my

unworthy keeping, stopped beating as you shall hear upon the very edge

of full disclosure. The ambushed meaning I have hinted at remained—a

hint.

III

THERE was, then, you will remember, but an interval of minutes

between the accident and the temporary recovery of consciousness,

between that recovery again and the moment when the head fell forward

on my knee and she was gone. That “recovery” of consciousness I feel

bound to question, as you shall shortly hear. Among such curious things

I am at sea admittedly, yet I must doubt for ever that the eyes which

peered so strangely into mine were those of Marion herself—as I had

always known her. You will, at any rate, allow the confession, and

believe it true, that I—did not recognize her quite. Consciousness

there was, indubitably, but whether it was “recovery” of consciousness

is another matter, and a problem that I must for ever question though I

cannot ever set it confidently at rest. It almost seemed as though a

larger, grander, yet somehow a less personal, soul looked forth through

the fading eyes and used the troubled breath.

In those brief minutes, at any rate, the mind was clear as day, the

faculties not only unobscured, but marvellously enhanced. In the eyes

at first shone unveiled fire; she smiled, gazing into my own with love

and eager yearning too. There was a radiance in her face I must call

glory. Her head was in my lap upon the bed of rugs we had improvised

inside the field: the broken motor posed in a monstrous heap ten yards

away; and the doctor, summoned by a passing stranger, was in the act of

administrating the anaesthetic, so that we might bear her without pain

to the nearest hospital—when, suddenly, she held up a warning finger,

beckoning to me that I should listen closely.

I bent my head to catch the words. There was such authority in the

gesture, and in the eyes an expression so extraordinarily appealing,

and yet so touched with the awe of a final privacy beyond language,

that the doctor stepped backwards on the instant, the needle shaking in

his hand—while I bent down to catch the whispered words that at once

began to pass her lips.

The wind in the poplar overhead mingled with the little sentences,

as though the breath of the clear blue sky, calmly shining, was mingled

with her own.

But the words I heard both troubled and amazed me:

“Help me! For I am in the dark still!” went through me like a sword.

“And I do not know how long.”

I took her face in both my hands; I kissed her. “You are with

friends,” I said. “You are safe with us, with me—Marion!” And I

apparently tried to put into my smile the tenderness that clumsy words

forswore. Her next words shocked me inexpressibly: “You laugh,” she

said, “but I——” she sighed—”I weep.”

I stroked her face and hair. No words came to me.

“You call me Marion,” she went on in an eager tone that surely

belied her pain and weakness, “but I do not remember that. I have

forgotten names.” Then, as I kissed her, I heard her add in the

clearest whisper possible, as though no cloud lay upon her mind: “Yet

Marion will do—if by that you know me now”

There came a pause then, but after it such singular words that I

could hardly believe I heard aright, although each syllable sank into

my brain as with pointed steel:

“You come to me again when I lie dying. Even in the dark I hear—how

long I do not know—I hear your words.”

She gave me suddenly then a most piercing look, raising her face a

little towards my own. I saw earnest entreaty in them. “Tell me,” I

murmured; “you are nearer, closer to me than ever before. Tell me what

it is?”

“Music,” she whispered, “I want music——”

I knew not what to answer, what to say. Can you blame me that, in my

troubled, aching heart, I found but commonplaces? For I thought of the

harp, or of some stringed instrument that seemed part of her.

“You shall have it,” I said gently, “and very soon. We shall carry

you now into comfort, safety. You shall have no pain. Another moment

and——”

“Music,” she repeated, interrupting, “music as of long ago.”

It was terrible. I said such stupid things. My mind seemed frozen.

“I would hear music,” she whispered, “before I go again.”

“Marion, you shall,” I stammered. “Beethoven, Schumann,—what would

please you most? You shall have all.”

“Yes, play to me. But those names” —she shook her head—”I do not

know.”

I remember that my face was streaming, my hands so hot that her head

seemed more than I could hold.