And I know not what rest, akin to the longing of a weary spirit for death, I found in it all. Nor do I know whence came the special and unimaginable peace that filled me. For that peace was special. My marriage had been a different rapture; the dreams of the first days of my love had not been the same; and it was perhaps this that I had implored in vain that night when, stretching out among my swags and gargoyles, I had cried to Whatever lay beyond the marbled sky that, might I but be delivered from this body of an ancient death, my life should be a dedicated thing. And now, when I least expected it, I had it. Between me, a man who had committed murder, and her, the mother of a nameless child, something I knew not—something still and splendid and awful—had come into being. Do you wonder that, in the stillness and splendour and awe of it, my brain slumbered within me, so that though those grey abysses full of answers waited for me, not a question did I put?...
"Yes," I said. "You know I killed him."
And "Ah!" she said again.
You will not find it difficult to believe that when you have been asked the question I had been asked, you and your questioner are not on ordinary terms. Indeed—believe me—you are hardly flesh and blood at all. You become eyes and voices, and yet not exactly that either—you are parts of an immanent vision and speech. You will also see that to dare such a question is to dare to be questioned in your turn. Therefore, less as wanting the information than as doing her the reciprocal honour of putting her on the same stark footing as myself, I again sought those marvellous eyes.
"You asked me," I said, "whether I was happy. I told you.... Are you?"
You have learned what she was; to what you already know I will add one or two things I picked up later. I wish to show you what elements she had to make happiness out of. She did fairly well out of her sittings. Ordinarily she made as much as two pounds a week, and she made more still when she was engaged for an evening class. To this were to be added the small sums she made by her crochet-work during her short rests. (Evie's teacloth had been made during the rests.) When she did not crochet, she made garments for her boy. She rose daily at seven, dressed her boy, breakfasted with him, and at nine o'clock brought him out with her. They walked a quarter of a mile together to her bus, where the child was met each day by a guardian, an old governess she trusted. She kissed him, and blew him another kiss as the bus turned the corner. He always waited with the old governess for this, but sometimes other buses intervened, so that she went without her last glimpse of him. Then she sought the studio where she happened to be engaged. There she posed, crocheted, posed again, lunched, and once more posed. She usually reached home again at eight o'clock, but when she secured evening sittings it was eleven before she got back. By that time her boy was in bed. She dressed him well, fed him well, told him tales, and bought him tops and toy soldiers. She paid the governess ten shillings a week. Sundays were her heavenly days. If they were cold or wet, she spent them in playing with the tops and soldiers on the floor; if they were fine she took him out on to the commons of Clapham or Wandsworth, or to the Zoo, for which her employers gave her Sunday tickets. She had saved a few pounds, and was adding to this sum by shillings and half-crowns, against the day when she would have to send him to school and start him in the world. This was her life.
And when I asked her if she was happy, she said, in a voice little above a whisper, "Yes—now."
Then, with another deep, clear look, she added, "I think I have all the best of Life."
It did not occur to me just then to wonder what she meant by that "now." I was pondering her last words. All at once, on a sudden impulse (though I was pretty sure beforehand what her answer would be), I said:
"He left you?"