'Would it have checked you?'
'I was a shot out of a gun, and I am glad he did not stand in my way. What power charged the gun, is another question. Dada used to say, that it is the devil's masterstroke to get us to accuse him. "So fare ye well, old Nickie Ben." My dear, I am a black sheep; a creature with a spotted reputation; I must wash and wash; and not with water—with sulphur-flames.' She sighed. 'I am down there where they burn. You should have let me lie and die. You were not kind. I was going quietly.'
'My love!' cried Emma, overborne by a despair that she traced to the woman's concealment of her bleeding heart, 'you live for me. Do set your mind on that. Think of what you are bearing, as your debt to Emma. Will you?'
Tony bowed her head mechanically.
'But I am in love with King Death, and must confess it,' she said. 'That hideous eating you forced on me, snatched me from him. And I feel that if I had gone, I should have been mercifully forgiven by everybody.'
'Except by me,' said Emma, embracing her. 'Tony would have left her friend for her last voyage in mourning. And my dearest will live to know happiness.'
'I have no more belief in it, Emmy.'
'The mistake of the world is to think happiness possible to the senses.'
'Yes; we distil that fine essence through the senses; and the act is called the pain of life. It is the death of them. So much I understand of what our existence must be. But I may grieve for having done so little.'
'That is the sound grief, with hope at the core—not in love with itself and wretchedly mortal, as we find self is under every shape it takes; especially the chief one.'