“Who is it?” Rose asked, with a startled look, and a voice almost of fear. “Is it—?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What has happened? Is—is he dead?”
“Yes,” I said.
She gave a little wailing cry and was gone.
“Rose! Rose!” I called, but she did not reply.
I went back to her mother and urged her to go to bed.
“Not yet,” she said, adding that she would not be able to sleep. “There is so much to say, so much to know.”
As she talked, dry-eyed now, for she had conquered her emotion—her tears were because she was at home at last, among old and happy associations once more—I was able to see how she had aged. But she did not look as though her life with Ronnie had been a failure. There was no careworn anxious suggestion; there was merely sadness in her loss, and fatigue. She was still beautiful.
I did not want to ask any questions, and the principal one was answered by her general demeanour with regard to Ronnie: they had been happy.