That was the coping stone. I heard myself saying in a faint voice:
“How?”
“Well, for one thing, he never lied to me. He told the truth about the singing, about me, about everything. He wasn’t a coward, either. He didn’t run away and send me a letter. He came and had it out with me, made me understand.”
This time I couldn’t speak. Her next words were like the laying of the final wreath on the bier of the loved and respected dead:
“It had to end and he ended it. He didn’t care how much it hurt me, or what I felt, or what anybody thought. That’s the right way to be—not to let other people’s feelings make you afraid, not to be considerate because it’s easier than fighting it out. He was a fine man.”
That was John Masters’ obituary as delivered by his discarded mistress.
The thing I couldn’t get over was that she showed no signs of penitence. As far as I could see she was in no way inclined to admit her fault, to bow her head and say, “I have sinned.” Her own conduct in the affair seemed to be the last thing that troubled her. Yet I can say that I, a woman with the traditional moral views, could not think her either abandoned or base. I don’t know to what world or creed she belonged, or to what ethical code she adhered, except that it was not mine or anybody else’s that I have ever known. Whatever it was it seemed to uphold her in her course. What was done was done and that was the end of it. No strugglings of inner irresolution, no attempt to exonerate or exculpate, disturbed her somberly steadfast poise. What would have been admirable to any one was her acceptance of the blow, and her recognition of her lover’s right to deliver it.
As she improved, moved about the room and took her place against accustomed backgrounds, I began to realize that the change in her was more than skin deep. Her wild-fire was quenched, her moods, her beamings, her flashes of anger were gone. A wistful passivity had taken their place, lovely but alien to her who was once Lizzie Harris. Whatever Masters had said in that last interview had acted like an extinguisher on a bright and dancing flame. It made me think of Dean Swift and Vanessa. Nobody knows what the dean said to Esther Vanhomrigh in the arbor among the little trees—only she had returned from it a broken thing to die soon after. Her lover had killed her; Lizzie’s had not quite, but he had certainly put out the light in that wayward and rebellious spirit.
It has its good points, for those people who are to help her find her more comprehensible, much more to their liking than they would the old Lizzie. Roger, for example, has met her again and is quite impressed. It was the other afternoon when I was sitting with her in her front room. The door was open and as I talked I listened for steps that would stop two flights below at my door. I had had no word that steps might be expected, but one doesn’t always need the word. There are mornings when a woman wakes and says to herself, “He’ll come to-day.” It had been one of these mornings.
At five, when the lights were lit and I had put on the tea water to boil, I heard the ascending feet. If it was some one for me could I bring them up? Lizzie would be delighted. I ran down and found him standing at my door preparing to knock with the head of his cane. Would he mind coming up—I didn’t like to leave her too much alone? No, he wouldn’t, and up he came.