"'I had to come to see if you loved me,' she said, 'and to make you my lover, all mine, for once and always. Always ... just like that! It's a long word to repeat, always, but I do make it sound convincing, don't I, dear? Please, I want you to believe that I'll love you always.... Of course, I know that one day you will sit up and take notice of the thrill in a woman's eyes, you won't be able to help it, and it's only right that you shouldn't. But it won't be like this. She won't have all of you, simply because you can't help always being mostly mine, the girl whom you once took no notice of except to give her advice. It will be no good your trying, Howard. I can hear you saying one day soon, when you want to see me very much, "My God, I must end this damnable wizardry"—damnable wizardry is exactly how you will put it, but even swearing won't help you at all. You will try to worship strange gods, but it will be a self-conscious business, perhaps good for your vanity but not for your soul. You can't ever love again like this, my Howard, you simply can't help loving Fay all your life. Those, roughly, are my orders, anyway ...' she whispered into my ear, her fair hair tumbling over my face, punishing me.
"I had ordered a cab earlier in the night. Her maid, to whom she had made some excuse, was to meet her at the station. But Fay wouldn't even let me accompany her part of the way, she insisted on saying good-bye at the open door, the door which I had opened so fiercely so long before. Two lives, after all, had been lived since then. She stood there, in the open doorway, her eyes sad and remote, and touched with something as old as this earth of ours is old, and a smile was crucified on her face; and she whispered:
"'Pour un plaisir mille douleurs. L'amour est mort, vive l'amour!'
"And then she went away.... I know no more of Fay Richmond."
Howard's tale ended, I think, not too soon, for he had already talked too much for his returning strength. He lay back with closed eyes, perhaps he was asleep, as I stealthily left the room.
It so happened that I did not see him again. As I have said, although he was convalescent at that time, he had a relapse, and died about ten days later. I rang up frequently to inquire, but more than a week passed before I had time to call at Beaumont Street. My young brother, for whom I was entirely responsible, had fallen ill in the meanwhile, and my time was anxiously spent, first in helping to nurse him, for nurses were not easy to find, and then in helping to find a nursing-home with a vacant bed, for nursing-homes were full; one had to die and vacate his bed before another could fight the wretched plague in it.
When at last I called at Howard's nursing-home and asked for him, the maid said she would ask the matron. But I said I would go up to see the matron myself, and was going upstairs to her room when I met her descending. As she saw me she shook her head gently and told me that Mr. Wentworth was not allowed to see any one, he was very ill. The crisis had not passed yet.... She was a sweet, white-haired old woman, on whose kind face grief had never been disciplined into that geniality which makes matrons sometimes horrible.
"I'm afraid for him...." she added inconclusively, sadly. And then she said: "I have spent most of my life among sick and ailing people, Mr. Arlen, but this has been the saddest time of all. Terribly sad it's been! Only this morning a dear sweet lady, who only came in two days ago.... An English lady married to an Italian, and she was just spending a day in London on her way to Tonbridge where her mother lives, when...." I am almost certain that there were tears, repressed rebellious tears in the kind eyes. "I think her dying has affected me most of all," she added apologetically. "She was such a sweet, beautiful lady!"
As I put up my umbrella against the rain outside I thought to myself that it was like the end of a tale by a sentimentalist, for he had compromised with the angels and brought together in the end, a Juliet unaware of Romeo, the bodies of a man and woman who had loved so unhappily and so incompletely. I heard a tired voice saying bitterly, "I know no more of Fay Richmond."