She hesitated. Her lips trembled.
“He was very glad to be there. Only he was sorry—for you.”
“You mean he was sorry that I wasn’t there sooner—with my father?”
“I think that was what he felt—that there was only a stranger.”
“I was just in time,” said Falloden slowly. “And I wonder—whether anything matters, to the dying?”
There was a pause, after which he added, with sudden energy—
“I thought—at the inquest—he himself looked pretty bad.”
“Otto Radowitz?” Constance covered her eyes with her hands a moment—a gesture of pain. “Mr. Sorell doesn’t know what to do for him. He has been losing ground lately. The doctors say he ought to live in the open-air. He and Mr. Sorell talk of a cottage near Oxford, where Mr. Sorell can go often and see him. But he can’t live alone.”
As she spoke Falloden’s attention was diverted. He had raised his head and was looking across the lawn towards the garden entrance. There was the sound of a clicking latch. Constance turned, and saw Radowitz entering.
The young musician paused and wavered, at the sight of the two under the lime. It seemed as though he would have taken to flight. But, instead, he came on with hesitating step. He had taken off his hat, as he often did when walking; and his red-gold hair en brosse was as conspicuous as ever. But otherwise what a change from the youth of three months before! Falloden, now that the immediate pressure of his own tragedy was relaxed, perceived the change even more sharply than he had done at the inquest; perceived it, at first with horror, and then with a wild sense of recoil and denial, as though some hovering Erinys advanced with Radowitz over the leaf-strewn grass.