“And you are sorry?”
“Sorry, dear Eppie? Of course.”
“It’s a child, a cripple,” said Eppie. “It had been ill for a long time, but we thought that we could save it. It died this morning. I didn’t know. I didn’t get there in time. I only found out after leaving you this afternoon. And it cried for me.” She had turned her head from him as it leaned against the chair, but he saw the tears slowly rolling down her cheeks.
“I am so sorry, dear Eppie,” he said.
“The most darling child, Gavan.” His grave pity had brought him near and it gave her relief to speak. “It had such a wistful, dear little face. I used to spend hours with it; I never cared for any child so much. What I can’t bear is to think that it cried for me.” Her voice broke. Without a trace, now, of impulse or glamour, he took her hand, repeating his helpless phrase of sympathy. Yes, he thought, while she wept, here was the fatal flaw in any Tolstoian half-way house that promised peace. Love for others didn’t help their suffering; suffering with them didn’t stop it. Here was the brute fact of life that to all peace-mongers sternly said, Where there is love there is no peace.
It was only after her hand had long lain in his fraternal clasp that she drew it away, drying her tears and trying to smile her thanks at him. Looking before her into the fire, and back into a retrospect of sadness, she said: “How often you and I meet death together, Gavan. The poor monkey, and Bobbie, and Elspeth even, ought to count.”
“You must think of me and death together,” he said.
He felt in a moment that the words had for her some significance that he had not intended. In her silence was a shock, and in her voice, when she spoke, a startled thing determinedly quieted.
“Not more than you must think of me and it together.”
“You and death, dear Eppie! You are its very antithesis!”