Free! She tried to summon the haunting vision of the old women with the tin cups of whisky reeling and staggering in time to the hunchback's playing. She could remember every detail, but these memories would not assemble even into a vivid picture and the picture would have been far enough from the horror of actuality in the vision she formerly could not banish. As a menace, as a prophecy, the old women and the hunchback and the strumming piano had gone forever. Free—secure, independent—free!
After a long silence Garvey ventured stammeringly:
"He said to me—he asked me to request—he didn't make it a condition—just a wish—a hope, Miss Lenox—that if you could, and felt it strongly enough——"
"Wished what?" said Susan, with a sharp impatience that showed how her nerves were unstrung.
"That you'd go on—go on with the plays—with the acting."
The violet eyes expressed wonder. "Go on?" she inquired, "Go on?" Then in a tone that made Clélie sob and Garvey's eyes fill she said:
"What else is there to live for, now?"
"I'm—I'm glad for his sake," stammered Garvey.
He was disconcerted by her smile. She made no other answer—aloud. For his sake! For her own sake, rather. What other life had she but the life he had given her? "And he knew I would," she said to herself. "He said that merely to let me know he left me entirely free. How like him, to do that!"
At the hotel she shut herself in; she saw no one, not even Clélie, for nearly a week. Then—she went to work—and worked like a reincarnation of Brent.