It went out of
my memory afterwards. Everything went out of my memory then; and I was
glad of it. It was a fresh start for me, with you--and you know it. I
wish I had forgotten who I was--that would have been best; and I very
nearly did forget."
He was moved by the vibrating quality of the last words. She seemed to
be talking low of some wonderful enchantment, in mysterious terms of
special significance. He thought that if she only could talk to him
in some unknown tongue, she would enslave him altogether by the sheer
beauty of the sound, suggesting infinite depths of wisdom and feeling.
"But," she went on, "the name stuck in my head, it seems; and when you
mentioned it--"
"It broke the spell," muttered Heyst in angry disappointment as if he
had been deceived in some hope.
The girl, from her position a little above him, surveyed with still
eyes the abstracted silence of the man on whom she now depended with
a completeness of which she had not been vividly conscious before,
because, till then, she had never felt herself swinging between the
abysses of earth and heaven in the hollow of his arm. What if he should
grow weary of the burden?
"And, moreover, nobody had ever believed that tale!"
Heyst came out with an abrupt burst of sound which made her open her
steady eyes wider, with an effect of immense surprise.
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