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Page 37
"Did you just wake up?" he said, after a moment. He did not know what to
say.
She now glanced up at him, but with an expression of only partial
attention, as if still retaining a hold on the clue of her thoughts.
"I've been awake some time trying to think it out," she said.
"Think out what?" he asked, with a feeble affectation of ignorance. He
was entirely at loss what course to take with her.
"Why, what it was that we came here to have me forget," she said,
sharply. "You needn't think the doctor made quite a fool of me. It was
something like hewing, harring, Howard. It was something that began with
'H,' I'm quite sure. 'H,'" she continued, thoughtfully, pressing her hand
on the braid she was yet in the act of pushing back from her forehead.
"'H,'--or maybe--' K.' Tell me, Henry. You must know, of course."
"Why--why," he stammered in consternation. "If you came here to forget
it, what's the use of telling you, now you've forgotten it, that is--I
mean, supposing there was anything to forget."
"I haven't forgotten it," she declared. "The process has been a failure
anyhow. It's just puzzled me for a minute. You might as well tell me.
Why, I've almost got it now. I shall remember it in a minute," and she
looked up at him as if she were on the point of being vexed with his
obstinacy. The doctor coming into the room at this moment, Henry turned
to him in his perplexity, and said--
"Doctor, she wants to know what it was you tried to make her forget."
"What would you say if I told you it was an old love affair?" replied the
doctor, coolly.
"I should say that you were rather impertinent," answered Madeline,
looking at him somewhat haughtily.
"I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, my dear. You do well to resent it,
but I trust you will not be vexed with an old gentleman," replied the
doctor, beaming on her from under his bushy eyebrows with an expression
of gloating benevolence.
"I suppose, doctor, you were only trying to plague me so as to confuse
me," she said, smiling. "But you can't do it. I shall remember presently.
It began with 'H'--I am almost sure of that. Let's see--Harrington,
Harvard. That's like it."
"Harrison Cordis, perhaps," suggested the doctor, gravely.
"Harrison Cordis? Harrison? Harrison?" she repeated, contracting her
eyebrows thoughtfully; "no, it was more like Harvard. I don't want any
more of your suggestions. You'd like to get me off the track."
The doctor left the room, laughing, and Henry said to her, his heart
swelling with an exultation which made his voice husky, "Come, dear, we
had better go now: the train leaves at four."
"I'll remember yet," she said, smiling at him with a saucy toss of the
head. He put out his arms and she came into them, and their lips met in a
kiss, happy and loving on her part, and fraught with no special feeling,
but the lips which hers touched were tremulous. Slightly surprised at his
agitation, she leaned back in his clasp, and, resting her glorious black
eyes on his, said--
"How you love me, dear!"
Oh, the bright, sweet light in her eyes! the light he had not seen since
she was a girl, and which had never shone for him before. As they were
about to leave, the doctor drew him aside.
"The most successful operation I ever made, sir," he said,
enthusiastically. "I saw you were startled that I should tell her so
frankly what she had forgotten. You need not have been so. That memory is
absolutely gone, and cannot be restored. She might conclude that what she
had forgotten was anything else in the world except what if really was.
You may always allude with perfect safety before her to the real facts,
the only risk being that, if she doesn't think you are making a bad joke,
she will be afraid that you are losing your mind."
All the way home Madeline was full of guesses and speculation as to what
it had been which she had forgotten, finally, however, settling down to
the conclusion that it had something to do with Harvard College, and
when Henry refused to deny explicitly that such was the case, she was
quite sure. She announced that she was going to get a lot of old
catalogues and read over the names, and also visit the college to see if
she could not revive the recollection. But, upon his solemnly urging her
not to do so, lest she might find her associations with that institution
not altogether agreeable if revived, she consented to give up the plan.
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