Rachel merely shook her head slowly as she tried to connect, in an impersonal sort of way, the notion of tragedy with John—John the successful, the obstinate, the simple in desire, the objective. There had been no real disappointment in all his life. She looked back half-indignantly at David, rejecting the suggestion.
David rose and took a turn up and down the parlor again, pausing in the shadows at the farther end of the room. Then he came back to his seat and faced her determinedly.
'What I had always hoped was that you would come to understand John without any outside interference. I came back over and over to see, but I always kept from butting in.' He paused again. 'I wouldn't say anything now, only your tone, your "Poor John" way, shows you are just the same as ever. I won't have him buried without your knowing something more about him—if I can show you,' he added more gently.
'Please tell me,' said Rachel quietly. Her mind was still half as much on David as on what he was going to say.
'There is nothing to tell that you should not have seen for yourself. You were his wife and you lived with him. From the time you came to this house one side of John's life ended. In a way he had no home and no—wife. A man wants a companion.'
Rachel almost spoke, in startled contradiction. It was she who had been uncompanioned.
'You were proud, I know, of never finding fault with John. Don't you know that he would have been glad if you had openly found fault with him? As it was, it seemed as if you thought him hopeless. When he said things about the house or anything in it, he really wanted you to contradict him and argue with him, and give him a way to come to the same place where you were—don't you see?'
'Did he tell you?'
'No. But of course I used to sit round with him a good deal. And I had always been used to understanding him,' he added, with a drop in his voice. 'John had a lot of imagination,' he went on.
Rachel looked up in real surprise.