He paused. Pamela was gazing at him with wide serious eyes. She showed less surprise than he had expected. She appeared somehow prepared, and extraordinarily calm. It made the telling easier. It was as though she had passed the final stage of emotionalism, had come through all the stresses of anguished uncertainty, of distressed and tormented doubt and wounded love, and emerged calm-eyed and efficient, amazingly controlled, and clear as to her judgment. She listened attentively without interrupting him. When he paused, she said:
“You are not preparing me to hear that he is dead?”
“No,” he answered. His feelings got the better of him, and he added bluntly,—“I would to God I were! Life—all that is left of it for him—isn’t worth the having. And anyway, living or dead, he isn’t worthy of one thought of your compassion.”
“Then he did go away with Blanche?” she said quietly.
“He followed her. He meant to marry her—means to marry her still, if her statement is to be believed. I saw her in Bloemfontein. It was she who told me of his illness.”
“What is the matter with him?” she asked, her earnest eyes holding his, questioning his, refusing, it occurred to him, to allow what he was telling her to bias her ultimate judgment. She had accustomed herself to ugly truths; she was not shocked or dismayed any longer, only anxious to have her worst fears confirmed or disproved. She desired to hear the whole truth, whatever it held of pain or humiliation. At least it could hold no disillusion for her.
“He has had a stroke of paralysis, they tell me,” Dare answered, avoiding her eyes.
He was conscious of a sudden movement on her part, of a quick, inaudible exclamation which was followed by a sharp indrawing of her breath. He did not look at her; he felt, without seeing them, that there were tears of pity and of horror shining in her eyes. He counted for something to her still. She was sorry for the man. Dare felt unreasonably incensed.
“There is hope of a partial recovery,” he continued dully, trying to keep under the sudden sharp jealousy that gripped him as nothing he had experienced in all their former talks had gripped and hurt. “He’ll get about again, they think... walk a little. His brain is affected—slightly. That will never be quite clear again...”
He broke off abruptly, and turned to her in protesting surprise. She was weeping. The tears were welling in her eyes and coursing down her cheeks. Arnott ill—broken—touched the deepest springs of her compassion. All the bitterness in her heart against the man who had so cruelly wronged her melted into sorrow for him in his terrible affliction. She no longer experienced any anger against him, only a great pity,—pity for the miserable wreckage of his health, which stood, it seemed to her, as a symbol of the wreckage of their love,—all the promise and the strength and the beauty gone for evermore,—only the dead ashes remaining in the furnace of life.