was not tall; he was not handsome;
but he had a lithe figure, square-shouldered, straight, strong, vitalized
to the last fibre with the swift currents of absolutely healthy blood, and
the still swifter currents of a passionate and pure manhood. His eyes were
blue, his hair and full beard of the bright-brown yellow which we call,
rightly or wrongly, Saxon. He came very quickly toward me with both hands
outstretched and began to speak. "My dear madam," he said, but his voice
broke, and with a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, he turned his back full
upon me for a second, and passed his right hand over his eyes. The next
instant he recovered himself and went on.

"I do not believe you will wonder that I can't speak, and I do not believe
you will ever wonder that I do not thank you--I never shall," and he
raised both my hands to his lips.

"Dora is in bed as you bade her to be," he continued. "She is well, but
very weak. She wants to see you immediately, and she has forbidden me to
come back to her room without you. I think, perhaps," he added
hesitatingly, "she is not quite calm enough to talk long. Forgive me for
saying it. I know you love her already."

"Indeed I do," replied I, "as if I had known her all my life. I will not
stay long;" and I followed him through a small dining-room, also gay with
flowers and vines, to a little room which had one side almost wholly of
glass and opened on a _loggia_ full of orange-trees and oleanders,
geraniums and roses. I will not describe Dora Maynard's bed-room. It was
the dainty room of a dainty woman, but spiritualized and individualized
and made wonderful, just as her sitting-room was, by a creative touch and
a magnetic presence such as few women possess. I believe that she could
not be for twenty-four hours in the barrenest and ugliest room possible,
without contriving to diffuse a certain enchantment through all its
emptiness.

She looked far more beautiful this morning than she had looked the day
before. I never forgot the picture of her face as I saw it then, lying on
the white pillow and turned toward the door, with the eager expression
which her waiting for me had given it. Neither of us spoke for some
seconds, and when we did speak we took refuge in commonplaces. Our hearts
were too full--mine with a sudden and hardly explicable overflow of
affection toward this beautiful being whom I had saved from dying; hers
with a like affection for me, heightened a thousand fold by the