"I must have galloped two hundred yards or so when he was beside me again. I took no notice; we rode on, almost knee to knee. And then I saw his hand stretch out, clutch my rein, and pull; I saw red, I saw nothing, or just his old, lined face bending over ... and, my dear, I swung my riding-whip as hard as I could across it. The hand left my rein, but my horse had already been pulled up. I don't remember what happened. I stared at him as unbelievingly as he stared at me. I seemed to see a weal across his face, where my whip had struck him—had I done that? And then he smiled. Dikran, that dear old man smiled after that horrible insult, so sweetly and sadly.
"'That then is the end, my child,' he said very gently; and then he left me, and for a long time I watched him as he rode slowly away. Frightfully ashamed.
"It was done, irretrievably; such things can't be forgiven, except in words; and as far as words went he, of course, forgave me. A few hours later I saw him in the hall; he was going to pass me, but suddenly I flung my arms about him, begging him ... very pitiful, dreadful thing I was. He was splendid. He said very softly into my ear that of course he forgave me, but that he was too old to have a proper control over his memory, and so couldn't forget, and that he was too old to be hurt any more, and so this would be the very last time, for he didn't think it would be wise for me to live with him any more. 'Sandra, my child, you must not think me too unkind for sending you away, but I think it is the best plan. You have lived with an old man long enough—it was a mistake. I see now that it was a mistake. You must forgive me, child. I was wrong to keep you so long. I thought, perhaps, it might have been different....' He was inexorable about that, and it wasn't my place to, I couldn't, beg him to keep me. I, who had hurt him so much!
"He must have made some excuse to our hostess, for the next day saw us in Paris. Raoul? Oh, I never noticed him any more. And two days later I was with a stodgy uncle in Portman Square, hating London but hating myself more. I have been miserable many times, but never so shamefacedly as then, during the two weeks which passed between my arrival in London and the coming of that note from the old man's valet, saying that Monsieur le Marquis was very ill, and the doctor said he would die; and so he had taken the liberty of writing to me, without permission, in case I should like to go and see him; would I be so kind as not to tell Monsieur le Marquis that he had written to me?
"Like a young woman to a dying lover, I went to Paris, and with a terrible flutter in my heart stood on the doorstep of the stern-looking house in the Rue Colbert.... They hadn't told him I was coming, but he must have expected me, for there was no surprise in the smile with which he met the timid little figure which came into his room. He seemed to me not ill, but just dying; he looked the same, only very tired. And then I realised that he was dying because he wanted to die. An angry girl had shown him that life was indeed not worth living, and so he was stopping his heart with his own hand.... It was terrible to realise that as I stood by his bed and he smiled quite gaily up at me. The weakness was too strong inside him, and he couldn't speak, just patted my hand and held it very tightly.... I was very glad when I was out of that room, and I did not see him again before he died early the next morning.
"And so you see, Dikran, for all your talk of dies iræ in the future, I've already had my dies iræ, and very sadly, too—and been the wiser for it in restraint."
Then it was that I realised with a start that my housemaid was staring at me from the door in the grey March morning, and that I was not listening to Shelmerdene in a backwater of the Thames, but was in London, where there is less time for cherishing one's ideals than for enquiring into other people's....