She fretted, wondering if she had grown deaf that she could not understand what he so much wanted to know!
He lay with the question shut in his half-closed eyes until the fifth morning, when his voice grew from a breath to a sound; and she heard, his lax fingers in her firm ones, her eyes dropped to meet his, lifted.
It took Florence a moment, groping into what was past, to understand, to realize; and another moment, while she looked across the bed, through the window, into the open sky, to answer—“Yes.”
With that he closed his eyes and turned away his head, as though there were nothing more in the world to ask. She rose and went to the window.
She seemed to see Julia’s blank eyes—how they had leaped to life at sight of her! And then the girl’s cry!
Florence wrestled with emotions, primitive, savage.
That he should ask, with his first breath, _that_! That with her assurance he should turn from her to sleep, without a look, a word, a memory!
Yet, she told herself, what wonder that the last, violent instant before unconsciousness should rise before him with his reawakening. Had the question any personal significance? Had not his eyes followed _her_? Didn’t he now turn to her, away from all the rest? Had not the wild girl, with her piece of folly, closed the door on _that_ incident? What could renew it?
It was a question, a cry, half hoping—but she knew it was a forlorn hope.
He reawakened early in the afternoon. His first stir brought her to him, still hot from her conflict with herself. He was stronger this time, more awake to living. He did not ask, but demanded.
Her amazement questioned him. He dwelt long on her face, seemed to pluck some significance from it.
“You know,” he asked, “how it happened? How I—?”
Again he stared at her long and steadily.
“Don’t blame _her_,” he said slowly. “It was not her fault. Mine—mine!”
“Never mind,” she told him; “we can go to-morrow.”
To hear him accuse himself for that other was more than she could bear. Again he seemed to divine her.
“You don’t know, Florence, what happened that morning. I was—I am—” he seemed to contemplate himself—“something no woman could forgive! It left her in such a way—oh, wretched!” His head rolled on the pillow. His eyes drooped away from her.