“I am glad,� said the voice that he had been wont to recall to memory as wooingly sweet. “They have been kinder than I knew.... Oh! it has always been so painful to recall,� she went on, with the old little half shrug, half shudder, “that I died an ugly death—that I was not pretty to look at as I lay in my coffin!...�
Daymond recoiled inwardly. That vanity, in a woman, should not be eradicated by the fact of her having simply ceased to exist, was an hypothesis never before administered for his mental digestion.
“How curiously it all happened,� she said, her full tones trembling a little. “It was autumn—do you remember?—and the trees in the Bois and the gardens of the Luxembourg were getting yellowy brown. There were well-dressed crowds walking on the Boulevards, and sitting round the little tables outside the restaurants. One could smell chloride of lime and carbolic acid crossing the gutters, and see the braziers burning at the corners of infected streets, and long strings of hearses going by; but nothing seemed so unlikely as that either of us should be taken ill and die. We were too wicked, you said, and too happy! ... only the good, miserable people were carried off, because any other world would be more suitable to them than this.... It was nonsense, of course, but it served us to laugh at. Then, because you could not sell your great Salon picture, and we could not afford the expense, you gave a supper at the Café des Trois Oiseaux (Cabinet particulier No. 6)—and Valéry and the others joined us. I was so happy that night ... my new dress became me ... I wore yellow roses—your favorite Maréchal Niel’s. When I was putting them in my bosom and my hair you came behind and kissed me on the shoulder. O, mon Dieu! mon Dieu! I can feel it now! We went to the Variétés, and then to supper. I had never felt so gay. People are like that, I remember having heard, just when they are going to die. Valéry gaped—I believe he was half in love with me—and I teased him because I knew you would be jealous. In those days you would have been jealous of the studio écorché. Ha! ha! ha!�
Daymond shuddered. The recurrent French phrases jarred on him; something in her voice and manner scarified inexpressibly his sensitive perceptions. He wondered, dumbly, whether she had always been like this? She went on:
“And then, suddenly, in the midst of the laughter, the champagne, the good dishes—the pains of hell!� She shuddered. “And then a blank, and waking up in bed at the hospital, still in those tortures—and getting worse and seeing in your white face that I was going to die! Drip-drip! I could feel your tears falling upon my face, upon my hand; but I was even impatient of you in my pain. Once I fancied that I heard myself saying that I hated you. Did I really?�
“I think—I believe you did! But, of course——� Daymond stopped, and shuddered to the marrow as she leaned across to him caressingly, so near that her draperies brushed his knee and her breath fanned upon his face.
“Imagine it!� she cried, “that I hated you! You to whom I had given myself—you for whom I left my——�
He interrupted, speaking in an odd, strained voice: “Never mind that now.�
“I had always wished to die first,� she resumed, “but not in that way; not without leaving you a legacy of kind words and kisses. Ah!� (her voice stole to his ears most pleadingly), “do you know that I have been here, I cannot tell how long, and you have not kissed me once, darling?�
She rose up in her place—she would have come to him, but he sprang to his feet, and thrust out both hands to keep her off, crying: