“Would you forget easily?” said the older man gently—he looked very old and very gentle and kind.
The handsome face of the young painter grew grave. “I’m afraid not,” said he. “But if I could forget a—a reality, certainly she could forget a fancy.”
No one—except perhaps his wife, with her memories of Richmond’s ardent and generous youth when he had wooed and won her despite her father’s misgivings about his poverty and her own misgivings about his size—but certainly no one else would have recognized the face of Daniel Richmond as he replied: “Not if she had, by some divine instinct, understood and appreciated such a rare man as you.”
Roger’s impatient gesture was almost angry. “I am not a man. I am a painter.”
“And if she did not forget?” persisted Richmond in the same slow, insistent way, like conscience itself. “If it was not a whim?”
Roger stood up. “I don’t grant your supposition,” said he. “But, granting it, then at least I’d not have made a mess of her life and of my own. For if I were false to my art it would revenge itself by tormenting me. And the wife of a tormented man is not happy.”
Richmond sat staring at the floor of the veranda. The wrinkles and seams and hollows in his face seemed to be deepening. After a few minutes of silence, disturbed by the irritating noisiness of a flock of sparrows, he said: “She refuses to come home. I offered to concede—everything. I’d be glad to let her have her way. But, as you say, it’s impossible. She’ll not come home. She blames me. I thought I was altogether to blame. I see I’m not. But—she blames me, and always will. And she’ll not make it up with me.” A long pause, then there came from him in a mere ghost of his normal voice: “And—it is killing me.”
Roger sat motionless, gazing at the bed of sweet old-fashioned flowers before the veranda.
Richmond broke the long stretch of evening stillness: “Would you—would it be asking too much of you— If you saw her you might persuade her to make it up with me.”
Roger did not move—did not reply. He had retreated deep within himself.