She laughed gaily. "Then," said she, "I am satisfied, for I am sure you know. But here is a mighty telepathist who can read the thoughts even of a mummy. A most formidable companion. But tell me how you know."

"I know because it is he who gave you to me to be my friend. Don't you remember?"

"Yes, I remember," she answered softly. "It was when you were so sympathetic with my foolish whim that I felt we were really friends."

"And I, when you confided your pretty fancy to me, thanked you for the gift of your friendship, and treasured it, and do still treasure it, above everything on earth."

She looked at me quickly with a sort of nervousness in her manner, and cast down her eyes. Then, after a few moments' almost embarra.s.sed silence, as if to bring back our talk to a less emotional plane, she said:

"Do you notice the curious way in which this memorial divides itself up into two parts?"

"How do you mean?" I asked a little disconcerted by the sudden descent.

"I mean that there is a part of it that is purely decorative and a part that is expressive or emotional. You notice that the general design and scheme of decoration, although really Greek in feeling, follows rigidly the Egyptian conventions. But the portrait is entirely in the Greek manner, and when they came to that pathetic farewell, it had to be spoken in their own tongue, written in their own familiar characters."

"Yes. I have noticed that and admired the taste with which they have kept the inscription so inconspicuous as not to clash with the decoration. An obtrusive inscription in Greek characters would have spoiled the consistency of the whole scheme."

"Yes, it would." She a.s.sented absently as if she were thinking of something else, and once more gazed thoughtfully at the mummy. I watched her with deep content: noted the lovely contour of her cheek, the soft ma.s.ses of hair that strayed away so gracefully from her brow, and thought her the most wonderful creature that had ever trod the earth. Suddenly she looked at me reflectively.

"I wonder," she said, "what made me tell you about Artemidorus. It was a rather silly, childish sort of make-believe, and I wouldn't have told anyone else for the world; not even my father. How did I know that you would sympathize and understand?"

She asked the question in all simplicity with her serious gray eyes looking inquiringly into mine. And the answer came to me in a flash, with the beating of my own heart.

"I will tell you how you know, Ruth," I whispered pa.s.sionately. "It was because I loved you more than anyone else in the world has ever loved you, and you felt my love in your heart and called it sympathy."

I stopped short, for she had blushed scarlet and then turned deathly pale. And now she looked at me wildly, almost with terror.

"Have I shocked you, Ruth dearest?" I exclaimed penitently, "have I spoken too soon? If I have, forgive me. But I had to tell you. I have been eating my heart out for love of you for I don't know how long. I think I have loved you from the first day we met. Perhaps I shouldn't have spoken yet, but, Ruth dear, if you only knew what a sweet girl you are, you wouldn't blame me."

"I don't blame you," she said, almost in a whisper; "I blame myself. I have been a bad friend to you, who have been so loyal and loving to me.

I ought not to have let this happen. For it can't be, Paul; I can't say what you want me to say. We can never be anything more to one another than friends."

A cold hand seemed to grasp my heart--a horrible fear that I had lost all that I cared for--all that made life desirable.

"Why can't we?" I asked. "Do you mean that--that the G.o.ds have been gracious to some other man?"

"No, no," she answered hastily--almost indignantly, "of course I don't mean that."

"Then it is only that you don't love me yet. Of course you don't. Why should you? But you will, dear, some day. And I will wait patiently until that day comes and not trouble you with entreaties. I will wait for you as Jacob waited for Rachel; and as the long years seemed to him but as a few days because of the love he bore her, so it shall be with me, if only you will not send me away quite without hope."

She was looking down, white-faced, with a hardening of the lips as if she were in bodily pain. "You don't understand," she whispered. "It can't be--it can never be. There is something that makes it impossible, now and always. I can't tell you more than that."

"But, Ruth dearest," I pleaded despairingly, "may it not become possible some day? Can it not be made possible? I can wait, but I can't give you up. Is there no chance whatever that this obstacle may be removed?"

"Very little, I fear. Hardly any. No, Paul; it is hopeless, and I can't bear to talk about it. Let me go now. Let us say good-by here and see one another no more for a while. Perhaps we may be friends again some day--when you have forgiven me."

"Forgiven you, dearest!" I exclaimed. "There is nothing to forgive.

And we are friends, Ruth. Whatever happens, you are the dearest friend I have on earth, or can ever have."

"Thank you, Paul," she said faintly. "You are very good to me. But let me go, please. I must be alone."

She held out a trembling hand, and, as I took it, I was shocked to see how terribly agitated and ill she looked.

"May I not come with you, dear?" I pleaded.

"No, no!" she exclaimed breathlessly; "I must go away by myself. I want to be alone. Good-by."

"Before I let you go, Ruth--if you must go--I must have a most solemn promise from you."

Her sad gray eyes met mine and her lips quivered with an unspoken question.

"You must promise me," I went on, "that if ever this barrier that parts us should be removed, you will let me know instantly. Remember that I love you always, and that I am waiting for you always on this side of the grave."

She caught her breath in a quick little sob, and pressed my hand.

"Yes," she whispered: "I promise. Good-by."

She pressed my hand again and was gone; and, as I gazed at the empty doorway through which she had pa.s.sed, I caught a glimpse of her reflection in a gla.s.s on the landing, where she had paused for a moment to wipe her eyes. I felt it, in a manner, indelicate to have seen her, and turned away my head quickly; and yet I was conscious of a certain selfish satisfaction in the sweet sympathy that her grief bespoke.

But now that she was gone a horrible sense of desolation descended on me. Only now, by the consciousness of irreparable loss, did I begin to realize the meaning of this pa.s.sion of love that had stolen unawares into my life. How it had glorified the present and spread a glamor of delight over the dimly considered future: how all pleasures and desires, hopes and ambitions, had converged upon it as a focus; how it had stood out as the one great reality behind which the other circ.u.mstances of life were as a background, shimmering, half seen, immaterial and unreal. And now it was gone--lost, as it seemed, beyond hope; and that which was left to me was but the empty frame from which the picture had vanished.

I have no idea how long I stood rooted to the spot where she had left me, wrapped in a dull consciousness of pain, immersed in a half-numb reverie. Recent events flitted, dream-like, through my mind; our happy labors in the reading-room; our first visit to the Museum; and this present day that had opened so brightly and with such joyous promise.

One by one these phantoms of a vanished happiness came and went.

Occasional visitors sauntered into the room--but the galleries were mostly empty that day--gazed inquisitively at my motionless figure, and went their way. And still the dull, intolerable ache in my breast went on, the only vivid consciousness that was left to me.

Presently I raised my eyes and met those of the portrait. The sweet, pensive face of the old Greek settler looked out at me wistfully as though he would offer comfort; as though he would tell me that he, too, had known sorrow when he lived his life in the sunny Fayyum. And a subtle consolation, like the faint scent of old rose leaves, seemed to exhale from that friendly face that had looked on the birth of my happiness and had seen it wither and fade. I turned away, at last, with a silent farewell; and when I looked back, he seemed to speed me on my way with gentle valediction.

CHAPTER XVII

THE ACCUSING FINGER

Of my wanderings after I left the Museum on that black and dismal _dies irae_, I have but a dim recollection. But I must have traveled a quite considerable distance, since it wanted an hour or two to the time for returning to the surgery, and I spent the interval walking swiftly through streets and squares, unmindful of the happenings around, intent only on my present misfortune, and driven by a natural impulse to seek relief in bodily exertion. For mental distress sets up, as it were, a sort of induced current of physical unrest; a beneficent arrangement, by which a dangerous excess of emotional excitement may be transformed into motor energy, and so safely got rid of. The motor apparatus acts as a safety-valve to the psychical; and if the engine races for a while, with the onset of a bodily fatigue the emotional pressure-gauge returns to a normal reading.

And so it was with me. At first I was conscious of nothing but a sense of utter bereavement, of the shipwreck of all my hopes. But, by degrees, as I threaded my way among the moving crowds, I came to a better and more worthy frame of mind. After all, I had lost nothing that I had ever had. Ruth was still all that she had ever been to me--perhaps even more; and if that had been a rich endowment yesterday, why not to-day also? And how unfair it would be to her if I should mope and grieve over a disappointment that was no fault of hers and for which there was no remedy? Thus I reasoned with myself, and to such purpose that, by the time I reached Fetter Lane, my dejection had come to quite manageable proportions and I had formed the resolution to get back to the _status quo ante bellum_ as soon as possible.

About eight o'clock, as I was sitting alone in the consulting-room, gloomily persuading myself that I was now quite resigned to the inevitable, Adolphus brought me a registered packet, at the handwriting on which my heart gave such a bound that I had much ado to sign the receipt. As soon as Adolphus had retired (with undissembled contempt of the shaky signature) I tore open the packet, and as I drew out a letter a tiny box dropped on the table.

The letter was all too short, and I devoured it over and over again with the eagerness of a condemned man reading a reprieve:

"MY DEAR PAUL,

"_Forgive me for leaving you so abruptly this afternoon, and leaving you so unhappy, too. I am more sane and reasonable now, and so send you greeting and beg you not to grieve for that which can never be. It is quite impossible, dear friend, and I entreat you, as you care for me, never to speak of it again; never again to make me feel that I can give you so little when you have given so much. And do not try to see me for a little while. I shall miss your visits, and so will my father, who is very fond of you; but it is better that we should not meet, until we can take up our old relations--if that can ever be._

"_I am sending you a little keepsake in case we should drift apart on the eddies of life. It is the ring that I told you about--the one that my uncle gave me. Perhaps you may be able to wear it as you have a small hand, but in any case keep it in remembrance of our friendship.

The device on it is the Eye of Osiris, a mystic symbol for which I have a sentimentally superst.i.tious affection, as also had my poor uncle, who actually bore it tattooed in scarlet on his breast. It signifies that the great judge of the dead looks down on men to see that justice is done and that truth prevails. So I commend you to the good Osiris; may his eye be upon you, ever watchful over your welfare in the absence of_