In every word he read her desire to spare him.
It had not stayed with her, then? The slender flame had died in her, the sudden spirit had fled. Well, if it had to go, it was better that it should go this way, all at once, rather than that they should have had to acknowledge any falling-off from the delicate perfection of her gift.
Three months later a letter from his friend, Mrs. Dysart, informed him of Freda's death at San Remo early in the spring.
Mrs. Dysart had seen her there. She was now staying with her niece, Julia Nethersole, and desired to see him. She was sure that he would want to hear about their friend.
He remembered Mrs. Dysart as a small, robust, iron-gray woman—sharp-tongued, warm-hearted, terrifically observant. Though childless, she had always struck him as almost savagely maternal. He dreaded the interview, for he had had some vague idea that she had not appreciated Freda. Besides, his connection with Miss Farrar was so public that Mrs. Dysart would have no delicacy in approaching it.
Mrs. Dysart proved more reticent than he had feared. The full flow of her reminiscences began only under pressure.
The news of Miss Farrar's death, she said, came to her as a shock, but hardly as a surprise.
"You were not with her, then?" he said.
"No one was with her."
The words dropped into a terrible silence. A sound broke it, the sound of some uneasy movement made by Julia.