Kirke hesitated.  Mr. Merrick came to his assistance.

“I forbid you to say a word about the past to Mr. Kirke,” interposed the doctor; “and I forbid Mr. Kirke to say a word about it to you. You are beginning a new life to-day, and the only recollections I sanction are recollections five minutes old.”

She looked at the doctor and smiled.  “I must ask him one question,” she said, and turned back again to Kirke.  “Is it true that you had only seen me once before you came to this house?”

“Quite true!” He made the reply with a sudden change of color which she instantly detected.  Her brightening eyes looked at him more earnestly than ever, as she put her next question.

“How came you to remember me after only seeing me once?”

His hand unconsciously closed on hers, and pressed it for the first time.  He attempted to answer, and hesitated at the first word.  “I have a good memory,” he said at last; and suddenly looked away from her with a confusion so strangely unlike his customary self-possession of manner that the doctor and the nurse both noticed it.

Every nerve in her body felt that momentary pressure of his hand, with the exquisite susceptibility which accompanies the first faltering advance on the way to health.  She looked at his changing color, she listened to his hesitating words, with every sensitive perception of her sex and age quickened to seize intuitively on the truth.  In the moment when he looked away from her, she gently took her hand from him, and turned her head aside on the pillow. “Can it be?” she thought, with a flutter of delicious fear at her heart, with a glow of delicious confusion burning on her cheeks. “Can it be?”

The doctor made another sign to Kirke.  He understood it, and rose immediately.  The momentary discomposure in his face and manner had both disappeared.  He was satisfied in his own mind that he had successfully kept his secret, and in the relief of feeling that conviction he had become himself again.

“Good-by till to-morrow,” he said, as he left the room.

“Good-by,” she answered, softly, without looking at him.

Mr. Merrick took the chair which Kirke had resigned, and laid his hand on her pulse.  “Just what I feared,” remarked the doctor; “too quick by half.”

She petulantly snatched away her wrist.  “Don’t!” she said, shrinking from him.  “Pray don’t touch me!”

Mr. Merrick good-humoredly gave up his place to the nurse.  “I’ll return in half an hour,” he whispered, “and carry her back to bed.  Don’t let her talk.  Show her the pictures in the newspaper, and keep her quiet in that way.”

When the doctor returned, the nurse reported that the newspaper had not been wanted.  The patient’s conduct had been exemplary.  She had not been at all restless, and she had never spoken a word.

The days passed, and the time grew longer and longer which the doctor allowed her to spend in the front room.  She was soon able to dispense with the bed on the sofa—­she could be dressed, and could sit up, supported by pillows, in an arm-chair.  Her hours of emancipation from the bedroom represented the great daily event of her life.  They were the hours she passed in Kirke’s society.