The Argosy — page 311: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

288 A Marriage in the Dark. “Yes. ‘Three or four times a kind of grey mist seemed to rise in front of me. It was very bright the last time. I almost thought I was going to see.” ‘“ How long ago was that P” “Six months, On my twenty-first birthday.” “Ah! Thank you very much; I won’t trouble you with any more questions. Keally, how late it is getting ! I must be off at once; my hands are very full just now, as you may suppose. Good-bye, Miss Urquhart. You have greatly obliged me by allowing me to make this examination.” “Do you think there is any hope for me?” I asked, plain- tively. ‘““Hope! Of course—of course,” said he, vaguely. ‘ We doctors never give up that if we can help it. It is the finest of all medi- cines. Good-bye, once more!” And the doctor grasped my hand with a kind, firm pressure, and was gone. It was fully twelve months before I saw him again. He went, I heard afterwards, first to London and thence, attracted by some great scientific luminaries, to Paris and Vienna. I am not ashamed to confess that the year of his absence appeared to me by far the longest in my life. With him my grasp on the realities of the world seemed to depart and I sank back, with a shudder, into my old formless, objectless, meaningless existence. True I had my mother, and the affection between us was deep and sincere; but there was too great a similarity about our mental processes; long familiarity had made us too well acquainted with every turn of the other’s thought for our intercourse to be relieved much above the dead level of monotony. Music was my great solace, the chief weapon where- with to ward off ennui and bring about a momentary feeling of con- tentment. I have a rather fanciful habit, Wagnerian though it be, of associa- ting certain airs with particular people. There is, for instance, a plain- tive little melody of Mendelssohn’s which invariably recalls my mother to me; and Dr. Saxon will always be linked in my mind with Raff’s Cavatina, for I was playing it softly to myself one evening when I heard his step in the hall. I ceased at once, and the next moment the doctor was standing in front of me holding both my hands in his own. “Well, Miss Urquhart,” said he. ‘Here I am back again, and I hope you are very glad to see me.” ‘‘ Very glad indeed,” I answered, withdrawing my hands, for I felt myself blushing like a school-girl. ‘““And I am delighted to be here again. It seems so like home, after wandering about among the capitals of Europe.” ‘It gives me great pleasure to hear you say that.” “When I came into this room, just now, and heard the music, and CONNICLOOKS. COn