“Oh, how lovely!” Susannah exclaimed in a hushed voice. And “It’s beautiful!” Lindsay agreed in a low tone.
It was the photograph of a bit of sculptured marble; a woman swathed in rippling draperies lying, at ease, on her side. One hand, palm upward, fingers a little curled, lay by her cheek; the other fell across her breast. A veil partially obscured the delicate profile. But from every veiled feature, from every line of the figure, from every fold in the drapery, exuded rest.
“It’s perfect!” Susannah said, still in a low tone. “Perfect. Many a time she’s fallen asleep just like than when we’ve all been talking and laughing. When she slept, her hand always lay close to her face as it is here. She always wore long floating scarves. You see he had to do her face from photographs ... and memory.... He’s used that scarf device to conceal.... How beautiful! How beautiful!”
There came silence.
“Mrs. Spash says he was in love with her,” Susannah went on. “Of course I was too young. I didn’t realize it. But it’s all here, I think. Did you notice that part of the letter where he says that for the last year or two his mind has been full of her? And of all his life here? That’s very pathetic, isn’t it? Now there will be a fitting monument over her.... He says it will be here in a few months. We must send him pictures when it’s put on her grave. How happy it makes me! He says he’s nearly eighty.... How beautiful.... You’re not listening to me,” she accused her husband with sudden indignation. But her indignation tempered itself by a flurry of little kisses when, following the direction of his piercing gaze, she saw it ended on the miniature which hung beside the secretary. “Looking at Glorious Lutie!” she mocked tenderly. “How that miniature fascinates you! Sometimes,” she added, obviously inventing whimsical cause for grievance, “sometimes I think you’re as much in love with her as you are with me.”
“If I am,” Lindsay agreed, “it’s because there’s so much of you in her.”
THE END
“The Books You Like to Read at the Price You Like to Pay”
There Are Two Sides to Everything—