She took the packet with her to her own rooms and once alone there opened it. There were two letters inside it. One was written in a feeble unformed hand, the words were ill-shaped, and the lines were uneven. The fingers which had traced them had never been very skilful in the management of the pen, being more used to guide the tiller ropes of a boat, or the handle of a scythe.
The characters were ill-writ and very pale, but she could read them; she knew even without reading them, that they came from Damaris; they were brief:
'When you get this, Madame, I shall not be living. Then I think you will not be angered any more, and you will believe. Do not let him know, because it would pain him. I mean, do not let him learn that I sought this death myself. Perhaps it was wrong, but I saw no other way; I could not live any longer on his charity now that I know. Before, I did not know. I could not bear to live either without seeing him sometimes, and I should never see him. Nothing wants me except the dogs, and they will be happy on the farm here. My master would only be disappointed in me if I lived. The world would not care for me. I should not have any strength in me to make it care. I used to think that I had genius, but it is all dead in me, quite dead now;—perhaps it was only imagination, and the wish to be something I was not, and the mere love I had of the poets. Forgive me that I write to you; I want to beg you to believe. I would have given my life for him, but he never thought of me in that way. I pray you to make him happier. I wish I could have seen him once——.'
The ill-written words ended abruptly, as though the pen which had written them had suddenly fallen from a hand too weak to hold it any more.
On an outside sheet was written in the fine clear writing of Rosselin:
'She died last night as the moon rose. I write to you, Madame, instead of to your husband by her desire. You will tell him as much or as little as you choose. I had not seen her for four days. God pardon me for it! I shall never pardon myself. I had left her in anger because I could not persuade her to play before you at Amyôt, and in anger I had stayed away from her. When they sent for me I found her already dying. The woman of the house told me that she had been one day alone to Paris, and what had been done to her there this woman did not know, but on her return she was quite silent, and very feverish and strange. She wandered about the village and the fields, and would scarcely come into the house to bed. At one of the cottages a young child she had often played with was lying ill with diphtheria. Damaris remained day and night with him, and when he was dying kissed him on the mouth: she never confessed it to me, but I believe that she sought death that way, for I think life for some reason or other which I know not had become wholly intolerable to her. She suffered very much. I brought her all the aid that science could give her, but it was of no avail. She had no wish to live, I think. She talked often of her island, and of the sea, and of the boats. Latterly she could not speak at all, then she wrote to you. It is a hideous death: heaven spare you and yours the like. You feel no sorrow for anything they say, but I think you would have been sorry for her. Perhaps it is best so. The world would have broken her heart; it has no place in it for such dreams as hers were. To the last she bade me never to let your husband know. Her last thought was of him. He was very good to her, but a worse man would perhaps have injured her genius less. I know not what passed between her and you. I only know that she had seen you. Whether you said anything which made her despair of living I cannot tell; all she said when she became delirious, which she did become towards the end, was only this always: "She will believe now, she will believe now." So I suppose you doubted her. I send you the few lines which she wrote three hours before she died when she could scarcely see. I have not read them myself. I think she would not wish me to do so. I am over eighty years old; it is hard to live so long only to see the last thing that one loves perish miserably. But she had genius, and the world hates it, so perhaps after all it is best as it is.'
She put the letters down, one on another, and her face had a great blankness of horror on it. Like Yseulte, this child had died for him, through her.
She shuddered as with cold in the warm fragrant air of her room, and large tears sprang into her eyes.
She could not doubt now.
She locked her doors, and no one entered there for an hour.