But as the sweet rose-scent came towards him on the air, a consciousness of her presence came with it: he started violently and rose to his feet. He was very pale as he bowed low before her, then stood waiting for her to speak. She was silent some moments.
To her temper so imperious, so arrogant, so indifferent, to praise or blame, it was not without great effort that she could say what she had come to say.
A strong emotion moved her. She had never believed it possible for her conscience to pain her, for her heart to ache with self-reproach, as they did now.
'Make him happier.'
The childish words haunted her. After all, what had she ever given him in return for the supreme devotion of his life? A few hours of physical ecstasy; and years of indifference, mockery, and neglect.
'Make him happier.'
To her critical intelligence and satiated mind, happiness in such simple reading of the word could not exist; it needed faith, it needed ignorance, it needed youth; it is never possible to those whose passions demand what nothing mortal can satisfy. Yet some reparation she knew she might still give to him; some gentleness, some sympathy, some response. These children who had loved him so well should not have died wholly in vain.
She leaned towards him, and the fragrance of the roses in her breast swept with dreamy sweetness over him.
'I came to ask your pardon,' she said in a low voice. 'I wronged you, I insulted you——'
He bowed low, and his lips, as they touched her hand, were very cold.