“You’ve never been in love with any one. If you’d ever known the meaning of the word, you wouldn’t have married me on those terms.”
Barbara turned away and covered her face with her hands.
“That’s the way Eric said good-bye to me!,” she gasped. “George, I asked you to divorce me two years ago.”
“And I wanted to make sure, for your sake. Well, let’s face reality for once! Imagine me to be dead.” . . .
With another unexpected turn, Barbara clung to me convulsively and laid her hand over my mouth:
“Don’t talk of death!,” she whispered. “I’m so frightened of it! And it’s very near at hand now. I’ve been ill so often, I’ve had to fight it so often. My dear, my dear, if I ever heard you were ill, it would bring back all my love: I’d nurse you; I’d shew you I could sacrifice myself. Never say that again!,” she cried hysterically.
My fit of bitterness passed as quickly as it had come; and I tried to apologize. Then it returned; and I asked myself whether this talk of “sacrifice” meant more than that Barbara was living, as ever, in a world of emotional romance. Then the car stopped; and I stumbled up the steps of my uncle’s house.
In the hall Violet Loring told me there had been no further hæmorrhages. Only a few more hours of life could be expected, however; and this Bertrand realized.
“I didn’t bother you before,” he began in his normal voice, “because I didn’t know whether I was going to live or die. I’m going to die, it seems; and I can tell you, George, it’s the most interesting experience I’ve ever had.”
His grim chuckles rumbled till the vast Victorian brass-bed creaked. Involuntarily Violet shivered; but I felt that the last and least service I could do was to make my mood chime with my uncle’s.