cians who had had
experience in diseases of the brain. They all counseled patience, and
advised against any attempt to hasten her recollections upon any point;
they all had known similar cases, but never one so sharply defined or so
painful as this. Still they were unanimous in advising that nothing should
be said to startle her; that all must be trusted to time.

Through these terrible days George Ware was braver than any one else. His
faith in the absoluteness of his hold on Annie was too great to be
disturbed. He was by nature as patient as he was resolute. He had not
wooed his wife for eighteen years to lose her now in any way except by
death, he thought. He comforted us all.

"Do be brave, sweet mother of Annie," he used to say to my poor Aunt Ann;
"all will be well. It is nothing to me to wait another year, after having
waited all these. It is not even hard for me to go without seeing her, if
that is best."

Nevertheless, his face grew thin and his eye heavy and his form bent, as
week after week passed, and he came daily to the house, only to be told
the same weary thing, that Annie had not asked for him. The physicians had
said that it would be better that she should not see him until she had of
her own accord mentioned his name. Her nerves were still in such a state
that any surprise threw her into palpitation and alarm which did not pass
off for hours. No human being could tell how great might be the shock of
seeing his face; how much it might recall to her; and whether, if it
recalled all, she could bear it. From the outset George believed the
physicians were wrong in this; but he dared not urge his instinct against
their knowledge; and he was patient of nature, and so the days went on,
on, on; and there was no change except that Annie grew steadily better and
our hearts grew steadily sicker and sicker until we almost looked back
with longing on the days when we feared she would die. And yet in every
respect, except the memory of her lover, Annie was the same as before. The
closest scrutiny could discover no other change in her, except perhaps
that she seemed even gayer than she used to seem, and a shade less tender,
but this also was as she had been before she had promised to be George
Ware's wife.

One morning George brought me a small bunch of lovely wild things from the
pine woods, Tiarella leaves just tipped with claret color by the early
frosts, sprays of Linnea, two or three tiny white maiden's hair