So it happened that Lily heard the news of Louis Akers' death from Willy Cameron. She stood, straight and erect, and heard him through, watching him with eyes sunken by her night's vigil and by the strain of the day. But it seemed to her that he was speaking of some one she had known long ago, in some infinitely remote past.
“I am sorry,” she said, when he finished. “I didn't want him to die. You know that, don't you? I never wished him—Willy, I say I am sorry, but I don't really feel anything. It's dreadful.”
Before he could catch her she had fallen to the floor, fainting for the first time in her healthy young life.
An hour later Mademoiselle went down to the library door. She found Willy Cameron pacing the floor, a pipe clenched in his teeth, and a look of wild despair in his eyes.
Mademoiselle took a long breath. She had changed her view-point somewhat since the spring. After all, what mattered was happiness. Wealth and worldly ambition were well enough, but they brought one, in the end, to the thing which waited for all in some quiet upstairs room, with the shades drawn and the heavy odors of hot-house flowers over everything.
“She is all right, quite, Mr. Cameron,” she said. “It was but a crisis of the nerves, and to be expected. And now she demands to see you.”
Grayson, standing in the hall, had a swift vision of a tall figure, which issued with extreme rapidity from the library door, and went up the stairs, much like a horse taking a series of hurdles. But the figure lost momentum suddenly at the top, hesitated, and apparently moved forward on tiptoe. Grayson went into the library and sniffed at the unmistakable odor of a pipe. Then, having opened a window, he went and stood before a great portrait of old Anthony Cardew. Tears stood in the old man's eyes, but there was a faint smile on his lips. He saw the endless procession of life. First, love. Then, out of love, life. Then death. Grayson was old, but he had lived to see young love in the Cardew house. Out of love, life. He addressed a little speech to the picture.
“Wherever you are, sir,” he said, “you needn't worry any more. The line will carry on, sir. The line will carry on.”
Upstairs in the little boudoir Willy Cameron knelt beside the couch, and gathered Lily close in his arms.