“I wonder why she has come here?”
“The ways of women are inscrutable.”
“I meant to have written and told her about Aunt Anne, but I had so much to do before we left London that I really forgot it.”
“You might send her a line from Monte Carlo; you heard her say that she was to be at Marseille three days: and then, perhaps, it would be better to leave her alone.”
“I should like to write to her just once, for I am afraid I was not very kind that day; but she took me by surprise.”
“Very well, then; write to her from Monte Carlo. It will give her an idea that we are not such terrible patterns of virtue ourselves, and perhaps she’ll find that a consolation; but I don’t see what more we can do for her. It is very difficult to help a woman in her position. She has put out to sea in an open boat, and, even if she doesn’t get wrecked, every craft she runs against is sure to hurt her.”
The letter was duly written and sent to the hotel at Marseille. It found Mrs. North sitting alone, in her big room on the first floor. She was beside the open window, watching the great lighted cafés and the happy people gathered in little groups round the tables on the pavement.
“Oh, what a pity it is,” she said to herself, “that we cannot remember. I always feel as if we had lived since the beginning and shall go on till the end—if end there is; but if one only had a memory to match, how wonderful it would be. If I could but see this place just once as it was hundreds of years ago, with the Greek people walking about and the city rising up about them. Now it looks so thoroughly awake, with its great new buildings and horrible improvements; but if it ever sleeps, how wonderful its dreams must be. If one could get inside them and see it all as it once was.” . . . She turned her face longingly towards the port, at the far end of the Cannebière. “I am so hungry to see everything, and to know everything,” she said to herself—“so hungry for all the things I have never had.—I wonder if I shall die soon—I can’t go on living like this, longing and waiting and hoping and grasping nothing.—I wish I could see the water. If I had courage I would drive down and look at it—or walk past those people sitting out on the pavement, and go down to the sea. There might be a ship sailing by towards England, and I should know how his ship will look if it, too, ever sails by. Or a ship going on towards India, and I could look after it, knowing that every moment it was getting nearer and nearer to him. To-morrow I will find out precisely where the P. & O.’s sail from for Bombay; then I shall be able to guess what it all looked like when he set his foot on board, a year ago. Oh, thank God, I may think of him a little—that I am free—that it is not wickedness to think of him—or to love him,” she added, with almost a sob.
She got up and looked round the room. It was nearly dark. She could see the outline of the furniture and of her own figure dimly reflected in the long glass of the wardrobe.