I had no answer for these comments.

“The deuce of it is the way she does it,” he continued, plainly bent on relieving himself.  “There’s no noise, no fuss; but you must obey, you don’t know why.  And yet you may flay me if I don’t love her.”

“Love her!” I repeated.

“She saved your life,” said Nick; “I don’t believe any other woman could have done it.  She hadn’t any thought of her own.  She has been here, in this room, almost constantly night and day, and she never let you go.  The little French doctor gave you up—­not she.  She held on.  Cursed if I see why she did it.”

“Nor I,” I answered.

“Well,” he said apologetically, “of course I would have done it, but you weren’t anything to her.  Yes, egad, you were something to be saved,—­that was all that was necessary.  She had you brought back here—­we are in Monsieur de St. Gre’s house, by the way—­in a litter, and she took command as though she had nursed yellow fever cases all her life.  No flurry.  I said that you were in love with her once, Davy, when I saw you looking at the portrait.  I take it back.  Of course a man could be very fond of her,” he said, “but a king ought to have married her.  As for that poor Vicomte she’s tied up to, I reckon I know the reason why he didn’t come to America.  An ordinary man would have no chance at all.  God bless her!” he cried, with a sudden burst of feeling, “I would die for her myself.  She got me out of a barrel of trouble with his Excellency.  She cared for my mother, a lonely outcast, and braved death herself to go to her when she was dying of the fever.  God bless her!”

Lindy was standing in the doorway.

“Lan’ sakes, Marse Nick, yo’ gotter go,” she said.

He rose and pressed my fingers.  “I’ll go,” he said, and left me.  Lindy seated herself in the chair.  She held in her hand a bowl of beef broth.  From this she fed me in silence, and when she left she commanded me to sleep informing me that she would be on the gallery within call.

But I did not sleep at once.  Nick’s words had brought back a fact which my returning consciousness had hitherto ignored.  The birds sang in the court-yard, and when the breeze stirred it was ever laden with a new scent.  I had been snatched from the jaws of death, my life was before me, but the happiness which had thrilled me was gone, and in my weakness the weight of the sadness which had come upon me was almost unbearable.  If I had had the strength, I would have risen then and there from my bed, I would have fled from the city at the first opportunity.  As it was, I lay in a torture of thought, living over again every part of my life which she had touched.  I remembered the first long, yearning look I had given the miniature at Madame Bouvet’s.  I had not loved her then.  My feeling rather had been a mysterious sympathy with and admiration for this brilliant lady whose sphere was so far removed from mine.  This was sufficiently strange.  Again,