"Just a dream, of course," I said to myself; "but how odd that I cannot remember at all what he said." An hour perhaps passed by while I lay quiet, strangely comforted by the dream I had forgotten; and then I lapsed back into sleep and again Hop Lee was with me, speaking, telling me something earnestly, exhorting me gently, and again I woke with a feeling of gratitude, of peace; but I could recall nothing of what had been said to me.
The light burned steadily beside me, and I sat up and thought.
The feeling of tranquillity that spread through me, so different from the feverish self-reproach that had gripped me ever since I had killed Hop Lee was so marked, so wonderful in its effect on me that I could not feel it was the result of a dream. No, the spirit of the old man had been there, absolving me of my broken word, absolving me of his murder. The fact that I could not remember, could not recall or understand when awake my dream or his words, seemed to shew that in sleep a mysterious message from a hidden source had been conveyed to me, which, from its nature and the nature of my ordinary material brain, could not be received by the latter. From that hour I began to get well rapidly. Often and often in the long nights or the lonely quiet days, I tried to call up a dream to me, a vision of either of them again; often I longed to speak to Suzee once more. But never again did any shade come to my pillow. He had come that once, of that I was convinced. To others it would always seem as if I had dreamed that night. I knew, by some inner sense, I had been spoken to by the soul of the old dead Chinaman, and forgiven.
The time passed evenly in that calm solitude. Sometimes still I was burnt with fever and racked with pain and got but poor food, and often longed for a hand to give me water in the dark nights. And I longed--ah, how I desired, infinitely, to send to Viola, tell her, and ask her to come to me!
I felt she would come then, that she would fly to me once she heard I was ill, in actual need of her.
I had begged her to come in the name of our love, appealed to her through our passion. I would never appeal to her pity.
Besides, I could not bear that she should see me now, wrecked in strength, a shadow, a skeleton of myself.