So in a solid brilliant throng we descended the stairs, all engaged with Lizzie, discussing her, lauding her, wondering at her—Lizzie, whom I had seen in the making, learning to be the vraie artiste, wounded, desperate and despairing that this might be.
At the stair-foot—this is the last of the coincidences—the crowd broke into lines and clumps, scattering for the exits, and through a break I saw a man standing by a pillar. He was looking up at the descending people, but not as if he was interested in them, in fact by the expression of his face I don’t think he saw them. It was John Masters.
If he hadn’t been so absorbed he would have seen me for I was close to him. But his eyes, set in that fixity of inner vision, never swerved. He looked much older, more lined, his bald spot grown all over the top of his head. Though the glimpse I had of him was fleeting, the crowd closing on him almost directly, it was long enough for me to see that the change was deeper than what the years might have wrought. It was spiritual, diminished will power, self-reliance grown weak. Shabby, thin, discouraged, he suggested just one word—failure.
My hand involuntarily shut on Roger’s arm and I whispered to him to hurry. I could not bear the thought of meeting Masters—not for my sake but for his. I couldn’t bear to look into his face and see him try to smile.
It is nearly one. Roger is writing in his study and Roger Clements IX is sleeping in his crib by my bed. How strange it all is. Four years ago not one of us, except Lizzie, the impossible and irresponsible, had the least idea that any of us would be where we are now. It was Lizzie, fighting out her destiny, who crowded and elbowed us all into our proper places, Lizzie, rapt in her vision, who brought us ours.
This is the real end of my manuscript. It has got somewhere after all. I can write “finis” with a sense of its being the fitting word. But before I do I want to just say that I made up my mind to-night, while we were driving home in the taxi, that I’ll never tell Roger now.
FINIS
Transcriber’s Notes:
On page 66, déracincée has been changed to déracinée.
All other spelling, hyphenation and non-English has been retained as typeset.