[CHAPTER VI]
CLARE GOES
That night Clare died.
Peter slept always now in the sitting-room with the door open lest she should need anything. He was tired that night, exhausted with struggles of conscience, battles of the flesh, forebodings of the future; he slept heavily without dreams. When at seven in the morning he came to see whether she were awake, he found her, staring ironically in front of her, dead.
Heart-failure the doctor afterwards said. He had told Peter days before that veronal and other things were old friends of hers. To-day no sign of them. Nevertheless . . . had she assisted herself a little along the inevitable road? Before he left on the evening before she had talked to him. He was often afterwards to see her, sitting up on the sofa, her yellow hair piled untidily on her head, her face like the mask of a tired child, her eyes angry as always.
"Well, Peter," she had said, "so you're in love with that girl?"
He admitted it at once, standing stolidly in front of her, looking at her with that pity in his eyes that irritated her so desperately.
"Yes, I love her," he said, "but she doesn't love me. When you're better we'll go away and live somewhere else. Paris if you like. We'll make a better thing of it, Clare, than we did the first time."