Pamela wished that she would cry or swoon. This composure was terrible. Sobbing herself, she was drawn to the bedside, and, as Felicity lifted the sheet, gazed down upon the quiet, beautiful face. The play-actress bent and kissed the young forehead set in such majestic peace, and replaced the coverlet, re-arranging the white roses after she had done so. Then once more she took her companion by the arm, led her back into the dining-room, and closed the folding doors.
“Now you must drink a glass of wine with me,” she said, “before you go.”
“But I will stay with you.”
“No. No. The coach is waiting for you. The driver will take you safe back. I prefer to be alone.”
She went to a cupboard and drew out a decanter and a couple of glasses, and while Pamela sat and mopped her eyes with a drenched handkerchief, and bit her lip to keep down the rising sob, and chid herself for a poor, vaporous wretch no use to anyone, the woman who had lost her all poured out the wine with a steady hand; and with a steady hand did something else besides.
She brought the glasses to the table, gave one to Pamela, and stood watching her while she drank.
Then she sat down beside her, and, still holding her own full glass between taper fingers, leant across and said:
“Kiss me, my dear, and thank you. When I went back to him after the rehearsal to-day, so full of joy, the woman said he was asleep, and I bent to kiss him, and, oh, his lips were cold! His lips were cold! Yours are warm. I wish I’d known you before. We should have been friends. Nay, ’tis as well! I might have brought misfortune to you as to the others. ’Tis better as it is,” she repeated rather wildly.
And when sobbing that her own story was told and that she knew too what a broken heart meant, Pamela would have kissed her again, Felicity pushed her from her, and drank quickly.
In the silence that followed, Pamela drew herself physically and mentally together, twisted her handkerchief, patted her curls, wiped her eyes a last time, then, in the tone of one firmly determined on the right course of action: