第45页 / 共416页

Wide-awake and nervous, Schofield lay open-eyed upon the couch

while unbidden thoughts raced through his brain.

The very fact of his sleeping on the plush couch was enough to

bring to his mind the memory of one whom he had irretrievably

lost on this memorable night. Was she not at this moment under

his own roof, miserable and nearly destitute? He knew that, as

long as he might live, his humble room up-stairs would never be

the same again.

It had been made a place sweet and full of wonder by the very

fact that she was in it. Never again, he knew, could he enter it

without its being faintly fragrant of her who, all his life, he

had considered the divinest created thing on earth. By her

presence she had sanctified it and made of it a shrine for his

meditative and wakeful hours.