I sat silent, thinking. My companion lit a cigarette and offered me one. I took it mechanically without lighting it.
“I made a mistake this evening,”—he went on—“I should not have sung that ‘Last Love-song.’ The fact is, the words were written by one of her ladyship’s former admirers, a man who was something of a poet in his way,—and she had an idea that she was the only person living who had ever seen the lines. She wanted to know if I knew the man who composed them, and I was able to say that I did—very intimately. I was just explaining how it was, and why I knew him so well, when the distressing attack of convulsions came on, and finished our conversation.”
“She looked horrible!” I said.
“The paralysed Helen of a modern Troy? Yes,—her countenance at the last was certainly not attractive. Beauty [p 163] combined with wantonness frequently ends in the drawn twitch, fixed eye and helpless limbs of life-in-death. It is Nature’s revenge on the outraged body,—and do you know, Eternity’s revenge on the impure Soul is extremely similar?”
“What do you know about it?” I said, smiling in spite of myself as I looked at his fine face, expressive of perfect health and splendid intellectuality—“Your absurd fancies about the soul are the only traces of folly I discover in you.”
“Really? Well I am glad I have something of the fool in my disposition,—foolishness being the only quality that makes wisdom possible. I confess I have odd, very odd notions about the soul.”
“I will excuse them—“ I said, laughing—God forgive me, in my own insensate blind conceit,—the while he regarded me fixedly—“In fact I will excuse anything for the sake of your voice. I do not flatter you, Lucio,—you sing like an angel.”
“Don’t use impossible comparisons;”—he replied—“Have you ever heard an angel sing?”
“Yes!” I answered smiling—“I have,—this very night!”
He turned deadly pale.