“Ingram,” he said, suddenly, and his voice startled his companion, “do you think it is possible to make Sheila happy again?”
“How can I tell?” said Ingram.
“You used to know everything she could wish—everything she was thinking about. If you find her out now, will you get to know? Will you see what I can do—not by asking her to come back, not by trying to get back my own happiness, but anything, it does not matter what it is, I can do for her? If she would rather not see me again, I will stay away. Will you ask her, Ingram?”
“We have got to find her first,” said his companion.
“A young girl like that,” said Lavender, taking no heed of the objection, “surely she cannot always be unhappy. She is so young and beautiful, and takes so much interest in many things; surely she may have a happy life.”
“She might have had.”
“I don’t mean with me,” said Lavender, with his haggard face looking still more haggard in the increasing light. “I mean anything that can be done—any way of life that will make her comfortable and contented again—anything that I can do for that. Will you try to find it out, Ingram?”
“Oh, yes, I will,” said the other, who had been thinking with much foreboding of all those possibilities ever since they left Sloane Street, his only gleam of hope being a consciousness that this time at least there could be no doubt of Frank Lavender’s absolute sincerity, of his remorse, and his almost morbid craving to make reparation if that were still possible.
They reached the house at last. There was a dim orange-colored light shining in the passage. Lavender went on and threw open the door of the small room which Sheila had adorned, asking Ingram to follow him. How wild and strange this chamber looked, with the wan glare of the dawn shining on its barbaric decorations from the sea-coast—on the shells and skins and feathers that Sheila had placed around! That white light of the morning was now shining everywhere into the silent and desolate house. Lavender found Ingram a bedroom, and then he turned away, not knowing what to do. He looked into Sheila’s room; there were dresses, bits of finery, and what not, that he knew so well, but there was no light breathing audible in the silent and empty chamber. He shut the door as reverently as though he were shutting it on the dead, and went down stairs and threw himself, almost fainting with despair and fatigue on the sofa, while the world outside awoke to a new day with all its countless and joyous activities and duties.