They sent for him that night. Haemorrhage had set in. There was a light burning by her bedside, for she had complained of the darkness. She wore a lace cap trimmed with blue ribbons, but she had not had strength to paint her lips and cheeks again, and the old woman's efforts had ended pitifully. She had grown very small in the last few hours, and with her thin, daubed face and blood-stained lips, she looked like a sorrowful travesty of the little circus clown who had ridden the fat pony and shouted "Oh la—la!" and blown kisses to the people.
She smiled vaguely in Stonehouse's direction, but she was only half conscious. Her hand strayed over the gorgeous quilt, stroking it with a kind of simple pleasure.
(She was like that, too, he thought—a dash of gay, unashamed colour in the sad scheme of things.)
Towards midnight she motioned to him and whispered something that he could not understand. But the old woman rose heavily from her knees and went over to the gramophone, thrusting aside with savage resolution the nurse who tried to intercept her. Stonehouse himself made an involuntary gesture.
"Why not?" he said. "Let her alone."
He stood close to her and waited. He felt that some part of him was dying with her, that he stood with her before a black partition which was thinning slowly, and that presently they would both know whatever lay beyond.
The macaw fidgeted on its golden perch, craning towards the light and blinking uneasily as though a strange thing had come into the room. The needle scratched under a shaking hand.
"I'm Gyp Labelle;
Come dance with me. . ."
He bent over her so that his face almost touched hers.
"I'm sorry—I'm sorry, Gyp."