"And it cannot
harm him. He won't remember it when he comes to his senses. He'll sleep
again and--forget. He'll go back to _her_ and never know. And I shall
never even see him again. Why can't I have my little sweet hour?"

Once more the man cried her name, and she knelt forward and bent above
him. "Oh, at last, Coira!" said he. "After so long! ... And I thought it
was another dream!"

"Do you dream of me, Bayard?" she asked.

And he said: "From the very first. From that evening in the
Champs-Elysees. Your eyes, they've haunted me from the very first. There
was a dream of you," he said, "that I had so often--but I cannot quite
remember, because my head hurts. What is the matter with my head? I
was--going somewhere. It was so very important that I should go, but I
have forgotten where it was and why I had to go there. I remember only
that you called to me--called me back--and I saw your eyes--and I
couldn't go. You needed me."

"Ah, sorely, Bayard! Sorely!" cried the girl above him.

"And now," said he, whispering.

"Now?" she said.

"Coira, I love you," said the man on the couch.

And Coira O'Hara gave a single dry sob.

She said: "Oh, my dear love! Now I wish that I might die after hearing
you say that. My life, Bayard, is full now. It's full of joy and
gratefulness and everything that is sweet. I wish I might die before
other things come to spoil it."

Ste. Marie--or that part of him which lay at La Lierre--laughed with a
fine scorn, albeit very weakly. "Why not live instead?" said he. "And
what can come to spoil our life for us? _Our life!_" he said again, in a
whisper. A flash of remembrance seemed to come to him, for he smiled and
said, "Coira, we'll go to Vavau."

"Anywhere!" said she. "Anywhere!"

"So that we go together."

"Yes," she said, gently, "so that we two go together." She tried with a
desperate fierceness to make herself like the man before her, to put
away, by sheer power of will, all memory, the knowledge of everything
save what was in this little room, but it was the vainest of all vain
efforts. She saw herself for a thief and a cheat--stealing, for love's
sake, the mere body of the man she loved while mind and soul were
absent. In her agony she almost cried out aloud as the words said
themselves within her. And she denied them. She said: "His mind may be
absent, but his soul is here. He loves me. It is I, not that other. Can
I not have my poor little hour of pretence? A little hour