“For the simple reason,” said he, “that Alexis Triona and all his works are dead. Washed out from the Book of Life. That side of me is all over and done with. You who know everything, can’t you understand?”
She caught the note of truth in his words and gradually there began to dawn on her the immensity of his artist’s sacrifice.
“Do you mean that you’re never going to write again?”
“Never,” said he. “Does this look like it?” and he touched the brass buttons on his livery.
She weakened through impatience at his aloofness, craving to know all that had happened to him, to get to the roots of Myra’s mysterious intrigue. His fatalistic attitude was maddening. The whole crazy combination of tragedy and farce that had set them down in the gorse-enclosed hollow of the hill-side, as though they were the only people on God’s earth, was maddening. The brass buttons were maddening. She flung sudden arms out wide.
“For God’s sake tell me everything that has happened to you.”
“If you’ll believe it,” said he.
She sat silent for a moment, feeling as though she were under his rebuke, and gazed over the valley at the hills black beneath the dying green and faded orange of the sunset. The thin smoke of the burned car mounted into the windless air faint with the smell of petrol fumes and scorched woodwork. And Triona looked down too and saw the end of the creation of his resurrection. He pointed to it.
“That was one of my little dreams,” he said gently. “A sort of rat trap on wheels—the most hopeless box of antiquated imbecility you can imagine. I took it into my head to recreate it. For a time I devoted my soul to it—and I made it a thing of life and speed and obedience. And there it lies dead, a column of smoke, like all dreams and, all my deliberate fault. Every system of philosophy, since the world began, has overlooked the ironical symbolism of life. That’s one; and my dream—smoke.”
She fell under the spell of his voice, although her brain revolted. Yet his note rang sincere in her heart—she knew not what to say. The sunset colours over the ridge of hills died into iron blue of the sky. A faint breeze stirred. She shivered with cold in her thin Tussore silk. He, watching her, saw the shiver.