Ezra gazed at her in silent amazement as if he were doubting that he had understood her.
“Yes,” she went on more calmly in her deep sweet voice. “I am more in need of pity than you. Your love has left you, and you grieve, but men will give you sympathy. When I lost my love I had to smile and pretend delight. I had to look on his joy and hers. You are not called upon to congratulate Cotterell on his happiness.”
“Great God, is that you, Madame? Or is it that I am going mad, and is this some mocking fiend?” gasped Ezra, starting up.
“Not a mocking fiend, Ezra, but I myself who for once in this world am enjoying the rare privilege of telling the truth. Ezra Weston, you are not the most unhappy person in Perfection City. I have long enjoyed that melancholy pre-eminence. Now in a common misfortune let us comfort one another.”
Ezra sat down again and dropped his head in his hands. Occasionally he looked at her as she moved about the room putting everything in order. It almost seemed as if he was trying to understand who she was and that he could hardly do so, his mind was in such a turmoil of grief and misery. She laid out two more candles beside those already alight in the candle-sticks.
“You will sit up all night,” she said at last. “These candles will last half the time, then light the other two. It is hard sitting in the dark alone with one’s breaking thoughts. Light the candles and keep them burning. That is what I did on the night you left to go to Smyrna to be married, and on the night when you brought her home here to Perfection City.”
She closed the door and left him alone with those two thoughts. Was it her marvellous reading of the human heart which prompted this extraordinary woman to declare her love to Ezra in those bold uncompromising words on this night of all others in his life? She knew that he would sit there in his deserted home, brooding over his lost wife, she knew also that every now and then the scorching recollection of what she had said would break in upon the brooding thoughts and scatter them. This then was the means, the almost unheard-of means, she had taken in order to soften the blow that had fallen upon him. He would not be able to think of himself as the most unhappy individual in Perfection City, because she had claimed that distinction in words which he never could forget. It was just as she had foreseen. It repeatedly happened during the course of that long and dreadful night that Ezra forgot why he was sitting alone in the kitchen, so lost was he in amazement at the recollection of the words which Madame had spoken. As the hours wore on it seemed to him that they became more and more impossible, until he began to think of them as the work of a brain unhinged by sorrow. Was it all a hideous dream, and would he awake by and bye? The first pair of candles burned out, and he lighted the second pair, recalling as he did so what she had said she did when he brought Olive home. Ah, Olive, Olive! His heart kept calling out in its misery.
He went into their little private room off the kitchen, in a sort of infatuation to see if she might be there. No. All was silent, still, deserted. He examined the tiny room minutely, saw the half-withered flowers on the table, took them up, and would have kissed them in his misery, only his eye lighted on a strange object he had never seen before. It was a man’s heavy seal-ring. He picked it up and examined it by the light of the candle: a plain gold ring set with a well-cut onyx intaglio of a griffin’s head. As he turned it about the light showed something-engraved in the inside of the ring. He held the candle nearer and read “J. G. C.”
He dropped the ring as if it had been an adder, and fled out of the room. As if pursued by furies, he rushed from the house and wandered about out of doors. Diana, who since Olive’s departure had been in a most miserable frame of mind, followed him about dejectedly, with her tail between her legs. Ezra, turning, saw the dog and for one moment felt a savage desire to kill it, for Olive had loved the dog and Olive had broken his heart. This phase passed, and in a passion of grief and despair he stooped and kissed the animal, for Olive had often patted Diana’s head, and fondled her long ears. The dog whined in sympathy and turned suggestively back to the house. Ezra followed mechanically. He would not go into the room where that ring lay, but remained in the kitchen. Exhausted nature could stand no more, and towards morning he fell into a troubled sleep, with his head resting upon his arms crossed on the table. Then in his dreams Olive came back to him in that vivid yet unsatisfying way in which our dearest do sometimes return to us, seemingly but to mock our grief. Olive was there, standing before him, but she looked at him not with her eyes, but with Madame’s. There was something terrible in seeing her own expression gone and in its place the look of another, and yet it was Olive, and she called on him to follow her. He hurried after her with the lead-clogged feet that always walk in dreams, and strained to reach her. When he did so, he found Madame. Olive and Madame flitted before his fevered fancy, always shifting and changing one into another, until he panted with the horror of it.
He awoke with a start as the door opened. His half-aroused eyes saw a vaguely defined figure in the door-way, blocking out the light of the morning.