And into his consciousness, throbbing heavily under the
rushing reaction from shock, crowded the crude fact that Alixe was no
longer an apparition evoked in sleeplessness, in sun-lit brooding;
in the solitude of crowded avenues and swarming streets; she
was an actual presence again in his life--she was here, bodily,
unchanged--unchanged!--for he had conceived a strange idea that she must
have changed physically, that her appearance had altered. He knew it was
a grotesquely senseless idea, but it clung to him, and he had nursed it
unconsciously.
He had, truly enough, expected to encounter her in life
again--somewhere; though what he had been preparing to see, Heaven alone
knew; but certainly not the supple, laughing girl he had known--that
smooth, slender, dark-eyed, dainty visitor who had played at marriage
with him through a troubled and unreal dream; and was gone when he
awoke--so swift the brief two years had passed, as swift in sorrow as in
happiness.
Two vision-tinted years!--ended as an hour ends with the muffled chimes
of a clock, leaving the air of an empty room vibrant.
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