"I am thankful."
"You can well believe that I am, when I tell you that this afternoon I am absolutely sure, for the first time in years, that the girl is safe to come and go as she pleases. I have had hideous uncertainty as well as hideous certainty to cope with. Now it is down to the hideous certainty. That is bad enough, but fate on an open field is less unmanning than [pg 253] fate in ambush. I have long known to a nicety the fate in the field." Gordon hesitated a second, then he said abruptly, with his face turned from his companion, in a rough voice, "Clara can't last many days."
James made an exclamation.
"She has gone down hill rapidly during the last two days," said Gordon. "I have been increasing the morphine. It can't last long." Gordon ended the sentence with a hoarse sob.
"I can't say anything," James faltered after a second, "but you know—"
"Yes, I know," Gordon said. "You are as sorry as any one can be who is not, so to speak, the hero, or rather the coward, of the tragedy. Yes, I know. I'm obliged to you, Elliot, but all of us have to face death, whether it is our own or the death of another dearer than ourselves, alone. A soul is a horribly lonely thing in the worst places of life."
"Have you told Clemency?"
"No, I have put it off until the last minute. What good can it do? She knows that Clara is very ill, but she does not know, she has never known, the character of the illness. Sometimes I have a curious feeling that instinct has asserted itself, and that Clemency, [pg 254] fond as she is of my wife, has not exactly the affection which she would have had for her own mother."
"I don't think she knows any difference at all," James said. "I think the poor little girl will about break her heart."
"I did not mean to underestimate Clemency's affection," said Gordon, "but what I say is true. The girl herself will never know it, and, you may not believe it, but she will not suffer as she would suffer if Clara were her own mother. These ties of the blood are queer things, nothing can quite take their place. If Clemency had died first Clara would have been indignant at the suggestion, but she herself would not have mourned as she would mourn for her own daughter. I must touch up the horses a bit. I want to get home. I may not be able to go out again to-night. Last night I was up until dawn with Clara." Gordon touched the horses with a slight flicker of the whip. He held the lines taut as they sprang forward. His face was set ahead. James glancing at him had a realization of the awful loneliness of the other man by his side. He seemed to comprehend the vastness of the isolation of a grief which concerns one, and one only, more than any other. Gordon [pg 255] had the expression of a wanderer upon a desert or a frozen waste. Illimitable distances of solitude seemed reflected in his gloomy eyes.