A month later he was brought back and by her order to her house. Fatally wounded, in delirium her name was ever on his lips, but in his eyes blankness. And on her knees by his bed she had twisted in an agony of prayer that for one moment, but one moment, light might come into them that she might pray for pardon ere he died. But no light came and he died, not knowing that for her love, too, was dead.
Again Miss Gibbie stirred, for again she seemed to see herself. This time she was by an open grave. White, rigid, erect, she watched with tearless eyes the lowering, not of a mere body in the ground, but the burying of all youth has the right to ask of life. Out of the future were gone for her the dreams of girlhood and a woman's hopes. The bareness and emptiness of coming years froze the blood in her heart, and when she turned away she lifted her head and bid life do its worst. Nothing could matter now.
Darker than the days of battle were the days of peace, and she made her father close the house and go away. For years they wandered where they would, but always were back for the month of June; and no one remembered that the twenty-first was the date of Colleen McMasters's death, or know that on that day his grave was visited, and there alone a woman yielded to the memories that ever filled her heart.
When her father died life in Yorkburg was impossible. With a tilt of her chin at its dulness, a wave of her hand at its narrowness, and eyes closed to its happy content, she had gone back to London and reopened the house which had become known for her sharp wit, her freedom of speech, and her disregard of persons who had for commendation but inherited position; and there for years had what she called headquarters, but never thought of or spoke of as home.
She pulled her chair closer to the window and, with elbows on its sill and chin on her crossed hands, looked out into the soft silence of the night.
"What a time for seeing clearly, seeing things just as they are, this midnight is, Gibbie Gault! In the darkness wasted time stares you in the face and facts refuse to turn their backs. And you thought once the waste was all the other way—thought you were wise to stand off and watch the little comedies and tragedies, the pitiful strivings for place and power, the sordid struggles for bread and meat, the stupid ones for cap and bells! The motives and masques, the small deceptions and the large hypocrisies of life interested you immensely, didn't they? Take the truth out and face it. You tell other people the truth—tell it to yourself. A selfish old pig, that's what you were, and thinking yourself clever all the while. Clever! And why? Because all your life you have been a student of history, of human happenings, and of man's behavior to his fellow-man, and particularly to woman, you thought you knew life, didn't you? You didn't! Because you were an evolutionist and recognized Nature's disregard of human values, the impartial manifestations of her laws, and the reckoning which their violation demands, you thought science must satisfy. Science doesn't satisfy. With ignorance and superstition, with life's cruelties and injustice, with human helplessness, you could quarrel well, but beyond the sending out of checks to serve as a soothing-syrup to your encumbrance of a conscience what did you ever do to give a lift to anything? Nothing! And the pity is there are many like you!
"'Cui-bono-itis.' That's what you had, Gibbie Gault—'cui-bono-itis.' Bad thing! Almost as hard on the people about you as the 'ego-itis' of to-day. Pity people can't die of their own diseases instead of killing other people with them. Great pity!"
The moon was gone. Only in faint lines of light was the blackness of the sky broken, and as she looked out over the trees in the garden below, and down the street, asleep and still, the scene changed, and no longer was she in Yorkburg, but in the little village of Chenonceaux, at the Inn of Le Bon Laboureur. Her friend, Miss Rawley, of Edinborough, was with her. They were taking their coffee outdoors at a table placed where they could best get the breeze and see the roses climbing over the lattice-work of the little hotel, with its pots of red geraniums in the windows. And in the door the young proprietor was smiling happily, for down the long, straight, tree-lined road an automobile which had just left the chateau was coming, and he had visions of what it would mean.
"I didn't." She nodded her head. "It's a way life has, this bringing of somebody across our path, this taking of somebody out of it, as incidentally as if we were flies. Well, that's what I used to think most of us were. Flies! Those who weren't flies were spiders. Some buzzed, some bit, and all in a net—all! And to think of the way I was taken by the shoulders and turned around! Made to see all I'd been doing was squinting at life with my nose turned up. Just that! Because I had seen the just man perish in his righteousness, and the wicked prosper in his wickedness, I thought, with my ancient friend, that time and chance happeneth to all, and people and pigs had much in common. What an old fool you were, Gibbie Gault! Take your pill! You saw life as you wanted to see it, and, giving nothing to it, got nothing out of it. Right!
"Queer what a kiss can do—just one!" She drew in her breath and felt it all again. The automobile had stopped. A party of Americans had gotten out and, slowly drinking her coffee, she watched them. A man and his wife, two children, a nurse, and a young girl, twenty, perhaps. Something about her, something of glow and vividness and warmth, held her, and a faint memory was stirred. A clear, fresh voice called to the chauffeur as she sprang out of the car and came close to the table near which she was sitting, and then she heard her name spoken in joyous surprise.