“Well, when she came back to Florence she began to lose her spirit. Money matters worried her, I fancy, though she would never trouble me with them. Then her husband accidentally found and began to trouble her, threatening that unless she went back to live with him he would take the boy (now nearly seven years old) from her. She sent the child to her people in Switzerland. ‘It would so much simplify matters if I were to die,’ she wrote me once. ‘My people would never let him go then; and my husband could urge me no longer. The struggle is too great. Only I do not want you to have to make the post mortem on me when I have said good-bye to this life: it would be too painful for you.’ Still I did not think she would ever really commit suicide; not because she had any fear of death, but because I knew she looked on the proceeding as cowardly; and also because she had a power of the most intense enjoyment and interest in all the beauties of life, whether physical or intellectual. Hers was the most elastic nature I have known. I said what one could say, and it’s precious little, in such circumstances: and she seemed to recover tone.
“Then I left Florence for nearly a month. I was obliged to return unexpectedly to the hospital; and was just leaving it to call upon her when I was told there was a post-mortem waiting for me. I went into the room. It was she; lying there on the table....
“Well, I got through somehow. It did not take very long, for I knew her well enough to guess what she had used, and had only to verify a suspicion. And while I was working it seemed as though she were looking at me, looking at me with a pitifully pleading look as though supplicating forgiveness for the horror of my position. I remember I kept her covered as religiously as though she had been alive; and I remember I arranged everything when all was over and carried her in my own arms to the bier which was to take her away. Then, I believe, Paoletti found me, got me into a cab, and drove me home in a high fever. The second evening I came to myself. I was without fever and fell quietly asleep. Towards morning I awoke. She was there standing by my bed with the same pitifully pleading expression I had felt in the hospital. She caressed my cheek, then bent over me and touched my lips.
“Oh yes, I know. Optical hallucination, subjective sensation, and all the rest of it. Hallucination; subjective as much as you like; but I saw her; and I feel her about me now just as plainly as I felt her then. I suppose the impression will fade as time goes on. I may take a wife and have children as other men do. Still (with a repetition of the little nervous laugh) it has not begun to fade yet; and I feel as though I should see her once more: on my death bed.”
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“Decidedly,” said Conti, breaking the silence. “Nature’s irony is more scathing than man’s. It is just Neri,—- Neri who never philandered, who never sentimentalised, who would have nothing to do with what was not downright brutally real—it is just Neri whom the Fates have wedded to a phantom bride.”
“Come,” said Neri, shaking himself, “it’s nearly dark; we can see neither dome nor bell-tower any longer. Shall we go to the Arena? Tina di Lorenzo is acting. And then we will finish up at the Gambrinus Halle.”