Forbes had been kept intensely active at the Embassy, where the Consul took over the interrupted duties of the Ambassador's office, but left to Forbes the personal details of the funeral ceremony, the closing up of the house, and the arrangements for getting Mildred back to New York. The Ambassador's body was to be taken home to America on board a war-ship proffered by the French Republic.
For three days Forbes was too grimly busy and too grief-stricken to feel more than a longing to see Persis; an impossible desire without impulse to achieve it.
Mildred was, for once, demanding help instead of giving it. The loss of her father was a devastation in her soul. She clung to Forbes as to a brother. Had Persis seen her in his arms she might have felt a jealousy; but not if she could have seen Forbes' heart. That was filled only with a sense of shame. He felt that in denying Mildred his love he had robbed the old man of his last great wish. At times he reproached himself with the very murder of his best friend, the murder of a great statesman, the noble father of a noble woman. And the motive of the assassination was his obstinate devotion to another man's wife!
People have a genius for remorse as for other emotions, and Forbes was of those who can mercilessly indict their own souls. Storms of self-condemnation were succeeded by storms of longing. About him hovered the tantalizing beckoning vision of Persis. He was mad to see her. He kept alternately vowing that he would not go near her and wondering when he should.
At first he dared not make an effort to see her, because he feared to involve her and because he had not a moment he could call his own. He was burdened with tasks of every sort, and in and out of his office he was beset with correspondents like sparrows demanding crumbs of news to cable to America. He had no leisure of his own except the black hours when he sank into his bed.
He would trudge to his room so exhausted, so drowsy, that he could hardly get his clothes off. The moment he lay down he was the prey to a swarm of black emotions that swooped about him like bats in a cave, swooped and shot and chittered, swept him with their vile wings and fastened their claws in his hair. He reproached himself with every wickedness and worthlessness from hideous ingratitude to murder and adultery that dared not take what it lusted for.
Sleepless nights and restless days wore him out until the funeral, an affair of great pomp and enormous impressiveness. When he saw Persis in the church her beauty was overwhelming in the black costume she wore under the shadow of a black hat.
Somehow, after the funeral ceremony, the prayers, and the long ritual, with which the church formally restored the soul to the heaven from which it emigrated and the body to the earth of which it was made, there came a great relief to Forbes—the restful word "Finis."
That night he dined with Mildred. She, too, felt the relaxation of a burden removed. She almost collapsed into sleep at the table, and her maid supported her to her room. She had wept herself out.
Forbes envied her nothing but her fluency in weeping. He carried about with him the ache of the tears a man feels but cannot release, the unshed tears that scratch the eyes like blown grit. He longed to be a boy again and cry his heart out as he had cried when his father was brought home dead. He longed to weep stormily as he had wept when the boy he was had been denied some luxury he greatly desired—honey, or a staying home from school, or some wild animal for a pet.