He shot her a tortured glance.
“Very soon, I am afraid.” He averted his working face. “Oh Anne, don’t despise me. I was mad, beside myself when it all happened. It is blurred, fantastic, like the memory of some confused dream.”
His miserable voice pierced Anne’s pride. She put her arms about him and drew him down on to the couch beside her. “Poor Alexis, my poor, poor boy,” she crooned sorrowfully.
He hid his face against the back of the sofa. “I am cursed, I seem to blast all those who love me,” he choked. “Oh, Anne, if you had seen her pitiful little face! I am not fit to live!”
“Hush, it is terrible for her, of course. But it was not your fault. You were horribly unfortunate, that is all.” She stroked his shoulder, all the aching tenderness of her heart in her finger-tips. “And now you are going to make it all up to her.”
He returned her look with dumb, suffering eyes. “How the gods must hate me!”
A little shudder ran through her. What was the adage? “Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad”? She placed her hand upon his lips. “Don’t say that. I can’t bear to hear you. Nobody hates you, least of all the gods. It is only that you are not as other men. Suffering seems to be the price exacted of genius.”
“I wish I were a clerk, tied to a desk in some rich man’s office. I might have had some chance at happiness then!”
She shook her head pityingly. “Oh no, that would never do. That life would kill you. Your wings are powerful. You must soar higher than the rest of us, even if it means aching loneliness and solitude.”
His mother’s words on Anne’s lips! There must be truth in them, indeed! He uttered a sorrowful cry. “Oh Anne, I simply cannot believe that this is the end. Tell me, must it be so?”