“You loved that cat—this will be a great loss.”
“Have I a memory?” she inquired.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Well,” she said quietly, fixing her magnifying glass firmly in her eye. “We have looked at each other, that is enough.”
And then one day she died.
The caretaker of the furnace came to him, where he was sipping his liqueur as he talked to his cousin, a pretty little blond girl, who had a boring and comfortably provincial life, and who was beginning to chafe.
He got up, trembling, pale, and hurried out.
The police were there, and said they thought it had been heart failure.
She lay on the couch in the inner room. She was fully dressed, even to her coral ornaments; her shoes were neatly tied—large bows of a ribbed silk.
He looked down. Her small eyes were slightly open, the left, that had used the magnifying glass, was slightly wider than the other. For a minute she seemed quite natural. She had the look of one who is about to say: “Sit beside me.”