She looked up and regarded him sullenly. “You are unchanged,” she said. “Life has prospered with you, I suppose. I haven’t read the papers nor heard your name mentioned for years; but I read all I could find about you during the war; and you look as if you had had few cares. Are you married?”
“No.”
“You have been true to me, I suppose.” And again she laughed.
“Yes, I suppose that is the reason. At least I have cared to marry no other woman.”
“Hm!” she said. “Well, the best thing you can do is to forget me. I’m sorry if I hurt your pride, but I don’t feel even flattered by your constancy. I have neither heart nor vanity left; I am nothing but an appetite,—an appetite that means a long sight more to me than you ever did. To-morrow, I shall have forgotten your existence again. Once or twice a year, when I am sober,—comparatively,—I come here to visit my father’s tomb. Why, I can hardly say, unless it is that I find a certain satisfaction in contemplating my own niche. I am an unconscionable time dying.”
“Are you dying?”
“I’m gone to pieces in every part of me. My mother threw me downstairs the other day, and that didn’t mend matters.”
“Come,” he said. “I have no desire to prolong this interview. There is a private carriage at the gate. Is it yours? Then, if you will permit me, I will see you to it.”
She walked beside him without speaking again. He helped her into her carriage, lifted his hat without raising his eyes, then dismissed his carriage, and walked the miles between the burying-ground and his hotel.