"Il est un age dans la vie Ou chaque reve doit finir, Un age ou l'ame recueillie A besoin de se souvenir,"
he quoted softly. Buscarlet was fitting the shade on the lamp again.
"I think," Regnault went on, "that I have come to that, after all. He told you, eh? Buscarlet told you that she—Lola—is my wife?"
"Yes," answered O'Neill. "Would you like me to send for her?"
"She would not come for that," said Regnault. He was studying the young man's face with bright eyes. "Ah," he sighed; "you don't know these things. We parted—of course; but not in weariness, not in the grey staleness of fatigue and boredom. No; but in a splendid wreck of wrath and jealousy and hatred. We did not run aground tamely; we split in vehemence on the very rock of discord. She would not come for a letter."
"Is she in Paris?" asked O'Neill.
"No, in Spain," answered Regnault. "At Ronda, in a great house on the edge of the hill, a house of small windows and strong doors. She is religious, Lola is; she fears hell. Let me see; she must be near to fifty now. It is twenty years and more since I saw her."
"But if I wrote," began O'Neill again.
"She would not come for a letter," persisted Regnault. "What would you write? 'He is dying,' you would say, 'Poof!' she would answer, 'he has been dead this twenty years to me.'"
"Well, then, what do you suggest?"