“Just as we all go now to be consoled,” put in Dr. Dakin.
“Precisely. And one of the secrets of her power of drawing confidence, is that Anne is by nature a maternal woman—a mother.”
“That’s the pity of it.”
“I agree. Life hasn’t given her everything. But at least it gave her three unforgetable years, and a memory which has kept her sweet and fresh and young as in her girlhood she could never have been.”
“And she went away,” said the doctor gently, “in the midst of her happiness?”
“She went away quietly, simply, with no fuss, as she does everything. With no farewell scene, or anything of that sort. She left him a letter, and with me, a message. The hardest I ever had to deliver in my life.”
Fontenelle got up, and threw the end of his cigarette into the fire.
“And then she travelled?”
“For years. When they were together, she and Dampierre went to Italy every spring. I believe she has gone over all the old ground since then. She seems to have gone half over Europe as well. I used to get letters from Athens, from Constantinople, from Naples, Rome, Florence. Fortunately she was a rich woman, able to work off her restlessness.”
He laughed a little. “That was one of her adorable simplicities. It never occurred to her that the possession of a fortune made any difference to the situation. She only looked upon it as a means of independence and freedom when her happiness should come to an end. And she was right. René never thought of it either. In some ways he was as childlike and as unworldly a creature as she. He had inherited a fairly good income from his father. He would not have known what to do with more. That’s Anne Page’s story, doctor. I don’t know how it strikes an Englishman, but to me it seems rather a wonderful one because of the type of woman to whom it belongs.”