ISOBEL. It seems so unfair that this poor dead boy should be robbed of the immortality which he wanted.
ROYCE. Hasn’t he got it? There are his works. Didn’t he have the wonderful happiness and pain of writing them? How can you do anything for him now? It’s just pure sentiment, isn’t it?
ISOBEL (meekly). If you say so, sir.
ROYCE (laughing). Am I lecturing? I’m sorry.
ISOBEL. No, I don’t mind. And I expect you’re right. I can’t do anything. (After a pause) Are one’s motives ever pure?
ROYCE. One hopes so. One never knows.
ISOBEL. I keep telling myself that I want the truth to prevail—but is it only that? Or is it that I want to punish him?... He hurt me so. All those years he was pretending that I helped him. And all the time it was just a game to him. A game—and he was laughing. Do you wonder that I was bitter? It was just a game to him.
ROYCE. As he said, he carried it off.
ISOBEL. Yes, he carried it off.... Even in those last moments he was carrying it off. Just that. He was frightened at first—he was dying; it was so lonely in the grave; there was no audience there; no one to listen, to admire. Only God. Ah, but when he had begun his story, how quickly he was the artist again! [261]No fear now, no remorse. Just the artist glorying in his story; putting all he knew into the telling of it, making me see that dead boy whom he had betrayed so vividly that I could have stretched out my hand to him and said, “Oh, my dear, I’m sorry—I will make it all right for you.” Oh, he had his qualities, Oliver Blayds. My father, yes; but somehow he never seemed that. A great man; a little man; but never quite my father.
ROYCE. A great man, I think.