He paused a moment, throwing back his head against the padded chair, while he watched the rings of smoke he was blowing.
“And so,” he went on presently, “she made a resolve which few women would have found the courage either to make, or what is more important—to keep. She determined to stay with him only while his first passion lasted. She made up her mind to go even before the first cloud was in the sky,—at any rate before it was visible to him. Women have keener eyes than men for rising clouds.”
The doctor was silent. “Rightly or wrongly,” he went on, “she felt that only in this way, only by running no risk of injuring either him or his career, she was justified in taking her little measure of happiness. She knew him very well,” he added meditatively. “René was as weak as most of us, weaker than some perhaps, where women are concerned. He would have been unfaithful, but he could never take his unfaithfulness callously. He would have been torn perpetually between his desires, and his dread of hurting her. And his work would have suffered terribly. Anne was right to go.”
“You speak as an artist,” remarked the doctor drily.
“I can speak in no other way,” returned François. “René Dampierre was a great man with a definite work to do.”
“But Dampierre,—René Dampierre?” The doctor uttered the name with respect. “He must have died soon afterwards, surely?”
“Eighteen months afterwards. But not, I regret to tell you, of a broken heart.”
François placed the end of his cigarette in the ash-tray before him, and ground it to powder. His smile was a curious blend of sadness and irony.
“It was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. The result of a fall from his horse. He was riding at Chantilly.”