fever
fancies had not been given, backward and forward through the corridor a
woman's garments trailed with light rustle, and a low voice hummed
brokenly the waltz he had heard. Ceasing by and by in a murmur of girls'
voices, and the old-remembered air, sung softly:

'For men must work and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden and waters deep.'

After that many days went by unmarked. His wound, aggravated by fatigue,
racked him with renewed pain; and when that was over, vitality was at
too low an ebb for anything but the most passive quiet. Before listless,
unnoting eyes drifted the crystal mornings, the golden hours steeped
deep in summer languors, the miracles of sun-settings and star-filled
holy nights. From his window he saw and heard always the ocean, blue and
calm, lapping the shore with dreamy ripple in bright days--driving
ghostly swirls of spray and fog clown the beach in stormy, gray ones.
The house itself seemed set in the deepest haunt of summertime. Great
trees, draped in the fullest growth of the year, rippled waves of green
high about it. All day long the leaf sounds and leaf shadows came
drifting in at the windows. Perfectest hush and quiet wrapped its
occasional faint strains of music, or chime of voices came up to him,
but did not break the silence. A place for a well soul to find its full
stature, for a tired or sick one to gather again its lost forces. And by
slow degrees the life held at first with so feeble a grasp came back to
him.

By and by there came a day when, from his balcony, he witnessed a
departure, full of girls' profuse adieux, and then the hush of vacancy
fell on the wide halls and airy rooms of the great house. That evening,
with slow steps, he came down the staircase. In the twilight of the
parlors showed dimly outlined a drift of woman's drapery, and the piano
was murmuring inarticulately. Outside, on the broad stone doorstep,
showed another drift, resolving itself into the muslins of Miss Nelly
Morris, springing up with glad words of welcome as his unsteady frame
came into view. Before half the protracted and vehement hand shaking was
over, Moore turned at a soft rustle behind him, and Nelly found her
introduction forestalled. Moore hoped, with his courtliest reverence,
that Miss Berkeley had not forgotten him.

She made two noiseless steps forward, and put out a small, brown band.
He took it in his left, with a smiling glance of apology at the
sling-fettered right arm