He stood, but for her, absolutely isolated, absolutely alone--the friends of his early life forgotten, wiped out as though they had never been; but what matter since it made him more entirely hers?
Each day brought Philippa its draught of Love's elixir, and she drank it lingeringly, unwilling to lose a drop. And in some curious way the potion wrought a change in her. She adopted a new personality. It was not that of Phil--the Phil she had undertaken to represent, for she would have had recollections of old days to linger over with him--but a new Phil, reborn in a wonderful present, with no past because he could not share it, and with a future veiled in half-fearful, wholly delicious mystery.
To-day, the glorious Now, was his and hers, they were together on the hill where Hope stands smiling, and if, somewhere below that dizzy altitude, there was a valley where Memory lurked, she could not see it for the rainbow clouds of joy that wrapped her round.
Francis had walked to the uncurtained window and was standing looking out, and after a while his voice broke in upon her thoughts.
"Come and look at the sunset, sweetheart."
The sky behind the clump of tall elms was tinged with tenderest rose, and here and there wisps of greyish-purple cloud were floating across the glow. All was very calm, very still, the silence broken only by the low notes of the birds who sung their vesper hymn. Side by side they watched the shadows creep softly over a drowsy earth.
"A sleeping world--a world of dreams," Francis said gently. "You and I in a beautiful world of dreams."
She made no answer, and after a minute he added, "To-morrow it will wake. Must we wake too, dear love?"
"Oh no," she cried quickly. "Why do you say that?"
"Somewhere out there," he continued thoughtfully, "there is a world of action. I wonder if it will call to us?"
"If it calls we will not listen."
"I have lost count of much, I think. I seem to have lived long in dreamland. Perhaps it is because I still feel weak, that at times illusive, intangible thoughts come into my mind. I cannot hold them. When I try to grasp them they are gone. It is rather a horrid feeling, not to be able to master your own thoughts. There is so much that I have forgotten--so much that seems blank. But, thank God, I have still my memory of you. All through my illness you were the anchor to which I clung when everything else drifted away from me."