"Still," Gabrielle cried, a sudden yearning in her eyes, "still I cannot count her as altogether unfortunate, your poor cousin! For it is not given to many—it is the mark of a very strong, a very great nature, to be capable of such love. And when she had obtained this man's confession?"
"She decided to live no longer," Adrian replied hoarsely. "She had no religion, no faith in Almighty God or in the survival of human personality and consciousness, no hope of a hereafter, to restrain her from taking her own life. She made her preparations calmly and silently, with the dignity of sincere and very impressive stoicism. The concluding words of the terrible book, in which she has dissected out all the passion and agony of her heart, of her poor tortured body as well as her poor tortured soul, are words of pity, of tenderness, toward the man who found himself unable to return her affection."
For a time both remained silent, while in the outer room Miss Beauchamp bade a genial farewell to the disconsolate Byewater.
"Yes, go, my dear young man, go," she said, "and breathe the surprising air of your very surprising native land. I shall miss you. But I understand the position, and give you my blessing. Later you will return to us—for Europe is full of illumination and of instruction. You will return, and, be very sure, we shall all be delighted to see you. Be sure, also, that you leave an altogether pleasant and friendly reputation behind you."
"But, but," Gabrielle said, presently, with a certain protest and hesitancy, "it pains, it angers me to think of so great a waste. For it is no ordinary thing, the bestowal by any woman of so magnificent a gift of love. That a woman, young and rich, should die for love—and now, at the present time, when our interest moves quickly from person to person, when we console ourselves easily with some new occupation, new friendship, when our morals are perhaps a little—how do you say?—easy, is it not particularly surprising, is it not, indeed, unique? To reject such affection, is not that to throw away, in a sense, a positive fortune? How could such devotion fail to attract, fail to create a response? Why, Monsieur, could not this man of whom you tell me return your cousin's great love?"
Adrian Savage spread out his hands with a gesture at once hopeless and singularly appealing.
"Because, Madame, because the man already loved you," he said. "And, that being so, for him there could be no possible room, no conceivable question, of any other love."
Madame St. Leger remained absolutely motionless, expressionless, for a moment; then she threw back her head, closing her eyes. "Ah!" she sighed, sharply. "Ah!"
And Adrian waited, watching her, a sudden keenness in his face. For what, indeed, did it betoken, where did it lead to, this praise and advocacy of Joanna Smyrthwaite's tragic devotion, followed by that singularly unrestrained and unconventional little outcry? The said outcry struck right through him, giving him a queer turn in the blood—carrying him back in sentiment, moreover, to the horrible yet perfect experience in René Dax's studio, when he had felt the whole weight of Gabrielle's beloved body flung against him and the clasp of her arms about his neck. He straightened himself, took a deep breath, his nostrils dilated, his lips parted. He emerged from the confusion and lethargy which had oppressed him, quickened by that same outcry into newness and fullness of life. To him all this was as the drawing aside of some gloomy, jealously impenetrable curtain—the curtain of desolate gray mist, was it, blotting out the distance, the town, the great woods, and the noble freedom of the sea, when he walked in that ill-assorted funeral procession up the wet road behind Joanna's coffin?—a drawing of it aside and letting the glad and wholesome sunlight shine on him once more. He no longer felt a stranger to himself. The past—all which had happened, all which went to shape his character and inspire his action, all which he had desired and held infinitely dear before the affaire Smyrthwaite imposed itself upon him—linked up with the present, in sane and intelligible sequence of cause and effect. Thus, chastened, it is true, a little older, sadder, wiser, but fearless, ardent, purposeful as ever, did Adrian the Magnificent come into his own again.
He drew nearer to her, laid his right arm somewhat possessively upon the arm of Madame St. Leger's chair, and spoke softly, yet with much of his former impetuosity.