The doctor was standing by her. "She gave me quite a fright," he was saying. "There, that's it, nurse. She'll be sleeping sweetly in a minute." The nurse hurried forward, and Corydon felt a stinging sensation in her side, and then a delightful numbness crept over her. "Oh, thank you, doctor," she whispered.
§ 5. THE next week held for Corydon continuous suffering, which she bore with a rebellious defiance— feeling that she had been betrayed in some way. "If you had only told me," she wailed, to the doctor. "I would rather have stayed as I was before!" For answer he would pat her cheek and tell her to go to sleep.
The days dragged on. Every afternoon her mother came and read to her for several hours; and in the afternoons Mr. Harding would come, and sit by her bedside in his kind way and talk to her. Sometimes he only stayed a few minutes, but often he would spend an hour or so, trying to dispel the clouds of gloom and despondency that were hanging over her. Corydon told him of her vision in the operating-room, and strange to say he declared that he had known it all; also he said that he had helped her to fight her way back to life.
He seemed to understand her every need, and from his sympathy gave her all the comfort he could. But he little realized all that it meant to her—how deeply it stirred her gratitude and her liking for him. During the day she would find herself counting the hours until the time he had named; and when the expected knock would come, and his tall figure appear at the door, her heart would give a sudden jump and send the blood rushing to her head. Her lips would tremble slightly as she held out her hand to him; and as he sat and looked at her, she would become uncomfortably conscious of the beating of her heart; in fact at times it would almost suffocate her, and her cheeks would become as fire.
She wondered if he noticed it. But he seemed concerned only for her welfare, and anxiously inquired how she ielt. She was not doing well, it seemed, and
the doctor was greatly troubled; her temperature had not become normal since the operation, and they could not account for it, as she was suffering no more than the usual amount of pain. To Corydon this was a matter of no importance; she was willing to lie there all day, if only the hour of Mr. Hoarding's visit would come more quickly. She was beginning to be alarmed because she had such difficulty in controlling her excitement.
The magic hour would strike, and the door of hop* open, and there upon the threshold he would appear, in all his superb manhood. Corydon thought she had never before met a man who gave her such an impression of vitality. He was splendid; he was like a young Viking, who brought into the room with him the pure air of the Northern mountains. When he looked at her, his eyes assumed a wonderful expression, a "golden" expression, as Corydon described it to herself. And day after day she clothed this Viking in more lustrous garments, woven from the threads of her imagination, her innermost desires and her dreams. And always at sight of him, her heart beat faster, her head became hotter; until the bed she lay upon became a bed of burning coals. She realized at last what had happened to her, that she loved—yes, that she loved! But she must not let her Viking see it; that would be unpardonable, it would damn her forever in his sight. And so she struggled with her secret. At night she slept in fitful starts, and in the morning she lay pale and sombre. But when he came she was all brilliancy and animation.
§ 6. EACH night the doctor would look anxiously at his thermometer; it was a source of great worry
to him and to Corydon's parents that the fever did not abate. Also, needless to say, the news worried Thyrsis; all the more, because it meant a long stay in the hospital, and more of their money gone. At last he came up to town to see about it; and Corydon thought to herself, "This is very wrong of me. It is Thyrsis I ought to be interested in, it is his sympathy I ought to be craving."
She brought the image of Thyrsis before her; it seemed vagu'e and unreal. She found that she remembered mostly the unattractive aspects of him. And this brought a pang to her. "He is good and noble," she told herself; she forced herself to think of generous things that he had done.
He came; and then she felt still more ashamed. He had been working very hard, and was pale and haggard; it was becoming to him to be that way. Recollections came back to her in floods; yes, he was truly good and noble !
He sat by her bedside, and she told him about the operation, and poured out the hunger of her soul to him. He stayed all the morning with her, and he came again and spent the afternoon with her. He read to her and kissed her and soothed her—his influence was very calming, she found. After he had gone for the night, Corydon lay thinking, "I still love him!"
How strange it was that she could love two men at once! It was surely very wrong! She would never have dreamed that she, Corydon, could do such a thing. She thought of Harry Stuart, and of the unacknowledged thrill of excitement which his presence had brought to her. "And now here it is again," she mused—"only this time it is worse! What can be the matter with me?"
Then she wondered, "Do I really love Mr. Harding? Haven't I got over it now?" But the least thinking of him sufficed to set her heart to thumping again; and so she shrunk from that train of thought. She wanted to love her husband.
He came again the next morning, and Corydon found that she was very happy in his presence. Her fever was slightly lower, and she thought, "I will get well quickly now."
But alas, she had reckoned in this without Thyrsis! To sit in the hospital all day was a cruel strain upon him; the more so as he had been entirely unprepared for it. Corydon had assured him that the operation would be nothing, and that she would not need him; and so he had just finished a harrowing piece of labor on the book. Now to stay all day and witness her struggle, to satisfy her craving for sympathy and to meet and wrestle with her despair—it was like having the last drops of his soul-energy squeezed out of him. He did not know what was troubling Corydon, but the rapport between them was so close, that he knew she was in some distress of mind.
He stood the ordeal as long as he could, and then he had to beg for respite. Cedric was down on the farm, with no one but the servants to care for him ; so he would go back, and see that everything was all right, and after he had rested up for two or three days, he would come again. Corydon smiled faintly and assented—for that morning she had received a note from Mr. Harding, saying that he would be in town the next day, and would call.
So Thyrsis went away, and Corydon lay and thought the problem over again. "Yes, I love my husband; but it's such an effort for him to love me! And why should
that be? I don't believe it would be such an effort for Mr. Harding to love me!"
So again she was seized by the thought of the young clergyman. And she was astonished at the difference in her feelings—the flood of emotion that swept over her. Her heart began to beat fast and her cheeks once more to burn. He was coming up to the city on purpose, this time; it must be that he wanted to see her very much!
That night was an especially hard one for her; she felt as though the frail shell that held her were breaking, as though her endurance were failing altogether. The- fever had risen, and her bed had seemed like the burning arms of Moloch. Once she imagined that the room was stifling her, and in a sudden frenzy of impatience she struggled upon one elbow and flung her pillow across the room. In that instant she had noticed a new and sharp pain in her side; it did not leave her, though at the time she thought little about it.