All it hath felt, inflicted, passed and proved,
Hushed into depths beyond the watcher's diving;
There lies the thing we love with all its errors
And all its charms, like death without its terrors.

Ay! there lay the thing she loved.

The time went on, and the artery broke out no more. Then at last came
a morning when John opened his eyes and watched the pale earnest
face bending over him as though he were trying to remember something.
Presently he shut them again. He had remembered.

"I have been very ill, Jess," he said after a pause.

"Yes, John."

"And you have nursed me?"

"Yes, John."

"Am I going to recover?"

"Of course you are."

He closed his eyes again.

"I suppose there is no news from outside?"

"No more; things are just the same."

"Nor from Bessie?"

"None: we are quite cut off."

Then came a pause.

"John," said Jess, "I want to say something to you. When people are
delirious, or when delirium is coming on, they sometimes say things that
they are not responsible for, and which had better be forgotten."

"Yes," he said, "I understand."

"So," she went on, in the same measured tone, "we will forget everything
you may fancy that you said, or that I did, since the time when you came
in wounded and found that I had fainted."

"Quite so," said John. "I renounce them all."

"_We_ renounce them all," she corrected, and gave a solemn little nod
of her head and sighed, and thus they ratified that audacious compact of
oblivion.

But it was a lie, and they both knew that it was a lie. If love had
existed before, was there anything in his helplessness and her long and
tender care to make it less? Alas! no; rather was their companionship
the more perfect and their sympathy the more complete. "Propinquity,
sir, propinquity," as the wise man said;--we all know the evils of it.

It was a lie, and a very common and everyday sort of lie. Who, being
behind the scenes, has not laughed in his sleeve to see it acted?--Who
has not admired and wondered at the cold and formal bow and shake of the
hand, the tender inquiries after the health of the maiden aunt and the
baby, the carelessly expressed wish that we may meet somewhere--all so
palpably overdone? _That_ the heroine of the impassioned scene at which
we had unfortunately to assist an hour ago! Where are the tears, the
convulsive sobs, the heartbroken grief? And _that_ the young gentleman
who saw nothing for it but flight or a pis