“It was better so. I am glad of every hour’s respite you have had. And now you’ll be able easily to break up the house, which would have been a hard thing and a bitter downfall in my lifetime. It will be quite natural now. They will give you a pension, and there will be the insurance money.”
“I cannot bear it,” she cried wildly. “I cannot have you speak like this.”
“Not when it is the utmost ease to my mind—the utmost comfort——”
She clasped her hands firmly together. “Say anything you wish, Edward.”
“Yes, my poor dear.” He was very, very sorry for his wife. It burst upon her without preparation, without a word of warning. Oh, he was sorry for her! But for himself it was a supreme consolation to pour it all forth, to tell her everything. “If I were going to be left behind,” he said, soothingly, “my heart would be broken: but it is softened somehow to those that are going away. I can’t tell you how. It is, though; it is all so vague and soft. I know I’ll lose you, Mary, as you will lose me, but I don’t feel it. My dearest, I had not a commission, not one. And there are three pictures of mine unsold in Daniells’ inner shop. He’ll tell you if you ask him. The three last. That one of the little Queen and her little Maries, that our little Mary sat for, that you liked so much, you remember? It’s standing in Daniells’ room; three of them. I think I see them against the wall.”
“Edward!”
“Oh no, my head is not going. I only think I see them. And it was the merest chance that the ‘Black Prince’ sold; and not a commission, not a commission. Think of that, Mary. It is true such a thing has happened before, but I never was sixty before. Do you forget I am an old man, and my day is over?”
“No, no, no,” she cried with passion; “it is not so.”
“Oh yes; facts are stubborn things—it is so. And what should we have done if our income had stopped in a moment, as it would have done? A precipice before our feet, and nothing, nothing beyond. Now for you, my darling, it will be far easier. You can sell the house and all that is in it. And they will give you a pension, and the children will have something to begin upon.”
“Oh, the children!” she cried, taking his hand into hers, bowing down her face upon it. “Oh, Edward, what are the children between you and me?” She cast them away in that supreme moment; the young creatures all so well, so gay, so hopeful. In her despair and passion she flung their crowding images from her—those images which had forced her husband from her heart.