Good God! What was she to do before dinner? How was she to occupy herself the whole of this long pitiless radiant spring day!
She found no way out but the usual one—to fly to the shadows. She rang the bell and ordered her car.
“Shan’t we begin with the open car soon, Madam?” said Ohlesson, the chauffeur.
“No!”
So the big black covered car ran out to the cemetery. And then Hedvig sat there on the seat by Percy’s grave, from which she had not allowed the dry withered funeral wreaths to be removed. Erect, motionless she sat under her black sunshade, whilst all around the light May green sparkled and swayed in the broad stream of sunlight. The sun appropriated even Hedvig’s black silk cloak and made it live and shimmer with a thousand colours. But her face was only lit up by a faint reflection from below, from the marble of the tomb.
It was more than a year and a half since Percy had died, but lately Hedvig had begun to take refuge here again. Here she fought her way back to the life of shadows, a thin life, a continuation of their life in the sanatorium. Not that she was able to forget even here on the seat in the cemetery all that consumed her:—money, business and everything connected with it. No, but she thought of it with less anxiety. Rather with a solemn and pious feeling that it was her duty to watch over what her dear Percy had left behind....
There was something strange about Percy Hill. He had been a poor invalid, and yet his character had been so free from any mean fears that even long after his death his memory acted as a sedative. As Hedvig sat there her heart filled with quiet gratitude that she had been given the joy of sacrificing some years of her life to him. She no longer suffered for having lied to him and cheated him in his last wish. She had only been the nurse who prevented her poor patient from injuring himself. Her conscience closed its eyes to the circumstances attending her patient’s death.
No, there was no danger in sitting there whispering to her memory, that sentimental liar. Her egoism was not frightened of the past, but of the future.
What a challenge to all the powers of the spirit, this feeble, mute, half-concealing lie in the midst of the clear sunshine! It seemed as if the light in sudden anger had surged around her with increased intensity; had sent a fresh wave of burning restlessness through her body. She rose and seemed to grope after the receding shadows. Then with dazzled, burning eyes she staggered along the cemetery path. Outside the gate her motor hummed, impatient to rush her back to all that waited for her ... business ... Levy ... the future...!
“I won’t change,” Hedvig thought in the car. She found there was something safe, reassuring, in the fact that she did not intend to put on different clothes. But when she came home she did so all the same. And she sat long before the mirror. And then she stood in the window looking down the road.