Мертвая комната. Уровень 2 / The Dead Secret

I saw the glen, and the blackberry bushes. I saw the mud on the walk in the middle of the glen. I saw the muddy water; and I saw you, Rosamond, a naughty girl, all covered with clay and wet. But, strangely enough, I did not see myself as the boy I then was. You were a little girl, and yet, though I was all in the past so far, I was in the present as regarded myself. Throughout the whole dream I was a grown man. And I was not blind.”

“What a memory you have, love, to be able to recall all those little circumstances after the years that have passed since that wet day in the glen! How well you recollect what I was as a child! Oh, Lenny, it almost breaks my heart to think of it! – when you saw me for the last time?”

“Do I remember, Rosamond! My last look at your face has painted your portrait in my memory in colors that can never change.

I have many pictures in my mind, but your picture is the clearest and brightest of all.”

“And there is some consolation in that thought.

When years have passed over us both, Lenny, you will not say to yourself, 'My Rosamond is beginning to fade.' I shall never grow old, love, for you! The bright young picture in your mind will still be my picture when my cheeks are wrinkled and my hair is gray. Suppose I ask you what I am like now, can you tell me without a mistake?”

“Try.”

“May I? Well, in the first place, how tall am I when we both stand up side by side?”

“You just reach to my ear.”

“Quite right.

And the next question. What does my hair look like in your portrait?”

“It is dark brown – and it grows rather too low on your forehead.”

“Oh, Lenny, how well you remember me! And my eyes?”

“Brown eyes, large eyes, wakeful eyes, that are always looking about them. Eyes that can be very soft at one time, and very bright at another.”

“Lenny, I am so glad, so proud, so happy to find that you can keep the image of me clearly in your mind! You deserve a hundred thousand kisses – and there they are!”

Suddenly they heard the sound of a faint, small, courteously significant cough in a corner of the room.

Mrs. Frankland turned round – and, to her horror and indignation, confronted Miss Mowlem, with a letter in her hand.

“You wretch! How dare you come in without knocking at the door?” cried Rosamond.

Miss Mowlem was very pale. She held out the letter apologetically, and said that she was very sorry.