"Did I hear you say you had been ill?" she asked.
He leant forward, bending his head low over the fringe; she could not see
his face. "I had inflammation of something or other, and I went partially
off my head--got out of bed and walked about in an east wind with a
temperature of a hundred and two, decimal point nine."
"Oh, Louis, how wicked of you! You might have died!"
"No such luck."
"For shame! I've been ill too; did you know? Of course you didn't, or
else you'd have come to ask how I was, wouldn't you? No, you wouldn't.
How could you come when you were ill?"
"I would have come. I didn't know."
"Didn't you? Oh, well--we had a fire here, and I was burnt; that's all.
How funny you not knowing, though. It was in all the papers--'Heroic
conduct of a lady.' Aren't they silly, those people that write papers.
I wasn't heroic a bit."
"I--I never saw it. I was in Paris."
"In Paris? Ah, I love Paris! That's where I went for my honeymoon. Was
that where you were ill?"
"Yes."
"Poor Louis! And I was so happy there."
Poor Louis!--she had loved Nevill in him and he was still a part of
Nevill. And for the rest, she who understood so much, who was she to
judge him?
He looked at her. By this time his sensations had lost the sting of
pity and horror. He could look without flinching. The fire had only burnt
the lower frame-work of the face, leaving the features untouched; the
eyes still glowed under their scorched brows with a look half-tender,
half-triumphant.
It was as if they said, "See what it was you loved so much."
The little fool, tortured into wisdom, was that what she meant? It was
always hard to fathom her meanings. Could it be that?
Yes, it must be. She had sent for him, not because she wanted to see
him, but because she wanted him to see her. She had sent for him to save
him. The sight of her face had killed her husband's love; she had
supposed that it would do the same kind office for his. Would any other
woman have thought of it? It was preposterous, of course; but it would
not have been Mrs. Nevill Tyson's idea without some touch of divine
absurdity.
But--could any other woman have done it? "See what it was you loved so
much." Poor little fool!
And he saw. This was not Mrs. Nevill Tyson, but it was the woman that he
had loved. Her being Mrs. Nevill Tyson was an accident; it had nothing to
do with her. Her beauty too? It was gone. So was something that had
obscured his judgment of her. He had doubted her over and over again,
unwillingly at first, willfully at the end; but he knew now that if for
one instant she had justified his skepticism he would have ceased to love
her. It was the paradox of her purity, dimly discerned under all his
doubt, that had tormented and fascinated him; and she held him by it
still.