The note was signed with Lily’s name, and underneath it in the same sprawling hand was written, “O God! I love you. Good-by.”
She had come in some time between the dawn and the broad daylight to leave the note by his side. She had passed him and gone away without a word, whither he could not possibly know. Nothing remained save a confused memory of her and this short, enigmatic, note which avowed nothing and yet everything.
For a long time Krylenko held the bit of paper between his strong heavy fingers, staring dully all the while at the generous impetuous writing. At last he took out a battered cigarette, put a match to it, and at the same moment set fire to the wisp of paper which he tossed among the cold ashes of the dead fire.... There are some things in this world which are impossible.
He got up and began pacing the floor angrily, up and down, up and down, scarring the polished floor at each step. It made no difference now. There was no one there any longer to use the floor. Presently he began muttering to himself. “They are no different than the others. They are all alike. When they are tired they run away because they are rich. Damn them and their money!”
And then all at once he went down upon his knees before the sofa and seizing one of the stained cushions in his arms, he kissed it again and again as if it were Lily instead of a feather-stuffed bit of brocade which he held in his arms.
LIV
HE did not quit the old house. He remained there in hiding to direct the strike. He was still there when Hennery packed the glowing Venice of Mr. Turner and the handsome malignant portrait of John Shane to be shipped to Lily in Paris. From the old house he sent out to the strikers message after message of encouragement and exhortation, until, at last, the strike was lost and there was no longer either need or place for him in the Mills or in the Town. No one knew when he went away or whither it was he went.
And the greatest of all the stories of Shane’s Castle remained a secret. The Town knew nothing of the greatest sacrifice ever made within its walls.
LV
THE drawing-room of the house in the Rue Raynouard was a long, high-ceilinged room with tall windows opening upon a terrace and a sloping lawn which ran down to the high wall that shut out the dust and the noise of the Rue de Passy. It was curiously like the muffled, shuttered drawing-room in the old house in Cypress Hill, not because the furnishings were the same; they were not. From Shane’s Castle Lily brought only two things ... the glowing Venice and the portrait of her father. Mr. Turner’s flamboyant painting hung above the black marble mantelpiece in the Rue Raynouard. The portrait of John Shane hung against the satinwood paneling opposite the row of tall windows. The similarity was not an easy thing to define, for its roots lay in nothing more tangible than the bond between old Julia Shane and her daughter Lily, in a subtle sense of values which the one had passed on to the other.