“Is that Mrs Stair, Claude?” a very weary voice called from the next room; the weakness, the terrible slow lassitude of it horrified me.
“Is she so ill?” I asked in a low voice, after he had called back:
”(Yes: coming, dear.) It is only a matter of days with her now,” he answered laconically.
And when I saw Nonie Valetta lying there, her pallid hands plucking at the blue and white stripes of her coverlet, I knew that he had spoken truth. Her hours were numbered. Pale as ashes, she lay there watching me with her strangely coloured eyes, the old weary bitter curve still on her lips. She too had eaten of the aloes of life.
I took her hand, and for a moment or two, as long as the nurse was in the room, we murmured the little conventional things that always lie ready on women’s lips while the eyes are probing deep, deep for the unspoken things. But as soon as we were alone she smiled her twisted smile at me and said:
“I see why they call you Ghostie.”
“It is very impertinent of them if they do,” I responded, smiling a little too.
“But it is true. You are the ghost of your old self when you came to Africa. You were very lovely then. I knew the moment I saw you that my life was over.” I felt myself paling.
“Do not speak of those days. That is past grief and pain. We are all much older and wiser now.”
“You do not look a day older—only as though you had been burnt in a fire, and there is nothing but the white ashes of you left. Yet if anything you are more beautiful—there is something about you no man could resist—something unwon—they’ll lay down their lives and burn in hell for the unwon. I am glad Tony Kinsella cannot see you to-night looking like a white flame among red roses—What are all those red roses? Yes—I am glad he cannot see you to-night.”