What could I do but wait? And over that beautiful, quiet country place floated the black cormorant, with wings outspread and hollow, burning eyes bent eagerly downward. I waited, not in fury, but oppressed by a deep melancholy. For the first time in my life I was thinking seriously of death. To any man no decisive event of life is so absolutely unimportant as his own death. I never have wasted, and never shall waste, a moment in thinking of my death. It may concern others, but how does it concern me? When it comes I shall not be there. The death of another, however—that is cause for reflection, for sadness. I knew, as did no one else, how intensely Edna loved life, how in her own way of strain and struggle she enjoyed it. And to me it was pitiful, this spectacle of her sudden arrest, her sudden mortal peril, as she was about to achieve the summit of her ambition.
I wondered as to Frascatoni. I pictured him waiting, with those tranquil, weary eyes already looking about for another means to his aim of large fortune should this means fail. There I misjudged him; for, one day as I stood in a balcony overlooking the drive he came rushing up in a motor, and my first glance at his haggard face told me that he loved her. In a way it is small compliment to a woman to be loved by the fortune-hunting sort of man; for, he does not release himself until he has the permit of basest self-interest. But Frascatoni, having released himself, had fallen in love with all the frenzy of his super-refined, passionately imaginative nature.
After a few minutes he drove away. I do not know what occurred—naturally, they would not speak of his call and I did not ask questions. I can imagine, however. She seemed better that day, and he must have gone away reassured. He was sending, every morning, enormous quantities of flowers; such skill and taste showed in the arranging that I am sure it was not the usual meaningless performance of rich people, who are always trying to make money-spending serve instead of thoughtful and delicate attention.
Nearly a month dragged along before she was able to see me. As I have explained, her beauty was not dependent upon evanescent charms of contour and coloring, but was securely founded in the structure of her head and face and body. So, I saw lying weakly in the bed an emaciated but lovely Edna. Instantly, on sight of her, there came flooding back to me the memory of the birth of Margot, our first child—how Edna had looked when they let me go into the humble, almost squalid little bedroom in the flat of which we were so vain. She was looking exactly so in this bed of state, in this magnificent room with the evidences of wealth and rank and fashion on every side. She smiled faintly; one of the slim weak hands lying upon the cream-white silk coverlet moved. I bent and kissed it.
“Thank you for being here,” she murmured, tears in her eyes. Her lips could scarcely utter the words.
“You must not speak, your ladyship,” warned the nurse. To flatter Americans and to give themselves the comfortable feeling of gratified snobbishness English servants address us—or rather our women—as if we had titles.
“You are to get well rapidly now,” I said.
“You’ll stay until I can talk to you?”
“Yes,” I said—what else could I say?
They motioned me away. I had committed myself to several weeks more of that futile monotony—and I no longer had the restraint of the sense that she might die at any moment.