"What are you going to do with the flat in town?" he asked. "I should like to take it if you are going to give it up."
"Oh, I shall keep it on," she said. "I shall be up for week-ends a good deal, at any rate until I have got my class in working order."
"You will let me know if you ever want to give it up?"
"Yes. Certainly I will. Will you go back? I suppose you will be going back to your work. What are your plans? You never answered my question. You went flying off into apophthegms."
"I loved Ottalie, too," he answered. "I won't say as much as you did, for you knew her intimately. I never was soul to soul with her as you were; but I loved her. I want now to make my life worthy of her, as you do. But it won't be in my work. I don't know what it will be in. You women are lucky. You can know people like her."
"Yes. I shall always be glad of that," said Agatha. "Even the loss is bearable when I think that I knew her fully. Perhaps better than any one."
"Yes," he said. He paused, turning it over in his mind. "Life is a conspiracy against women," he added. "That is why they are so wonderful and so strange. I am only groping in the dark about her."
"Roger," said Agatha, speaking slowly, "I think I ought to tell you. I knew that you were in love with her. I was jealous of you. I did all that I could to keep you apart. She was in love with you. When she saw you at the theatre before the disturbance began, she would have gone to your box if I had not said that I was sure you would prefer to be alone. In the morning she saw what one of the papers said. She insisted on going to see you at your rooms. She said that she was sure you were expecting her, or that something had kept her letters from you. I told her that it wasn't a very usual thing to do. She said that she would talk about that afterwards. Afterwards, when she had gone, and failed to see you, she was horrified at what you might think of her."
It was very sweet to hear more of her, thus, after all was over. It was something new about her. He had never seen that side of her. He wondered how much more Agatha would tell him, or permit him to learn, in years to come. He saw that she was near tears. He was not going to keep her longer on the rack.
"Agatha," he said, "we have been at cross-purposes for a long time now. We have not been just to each other. Let it end now. We both loved her. Don't let it go on, now that she is dead. I want to feel that the one who knew her best is my friend. I want you to let me help you, as a brother might, whenever you want help. Will you?"