She stared at him. They stood looking at each other—two people scarred and marred by the passionate lawlessness of their own natures—in her eyes amazement, in his that devastating mournfulness. What was he speaking of? He seemed to know of her sorrow, to share it.
“A son,” he said softly, “to lose one’s son! The being one wound one’s dreams about—who was to be so infinitely greater than oneself—to compensate with the shining splendour of his soul for all the darkness of one’s own.” Valeria gloomed at him with bitter eyes. How did he know so well wherewith to mock her, this strange Eastern man with his gentle, un-English voice? “You should not hate me. It is unworthy of the mother of a son who gave his life for a friend.”
While she stood considering him—how un-English he was to have tears running down his cheeks like that; that he must be a Jew (as she had often supposed) to be so emotional, so unreserved, so piercingly sapient—the truth came to her like an arrow. It was his son that hers had died to save and died for in vain! They were both sonless!
Nothing but the bare news of her loss had come to her, no names but that of her son. Quelch with his wealth had commanded every detail of the tragedy, and been receiving news down to that very hour. The table was littered with cablegrams.
She stood very still and white and weary until he had finished telling her all, thanking her for the nobleness of her son’s effort, assuring her that if in all the wide world there was anything that could represent his gratitude, any act of his that would help to ease her wound, she had only to speak. Then from her pocket she produced a little parcel of sparkling stones wrapped in a silken handkerchief and laid it on the table.
“A little foolish girl returns you these,” she said, and her voice, too, had grown very gentle. “She left to-night to join her husband. This you can do for me: Forget her, and let her forget you.”
The End.
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