He was
killed on the spot; Gwendolen escaped unhurt.
I pass rapidly over the question of this unmitigated tragedy, of
what the loss of my best friend meant for me, and I complete my
little history of my patience and my pain by the frank statement of
my having, in a postscript to my very first letter to her after the
receipt of the hideous news, asked Mrs. Corvick whether her husband
mightn't at least have finished the great article on Vereker. Her
answer was as prompt as my question: the article, which had been
barely begun, was a mere heartbreaking scrap. She explained that
our friend, abroad, had just settled down to it when interrupted by
her mother's death, and that then, on his return, he had been kept
from work by the engrossments into which that calamity was to
plunge them. The opening pages were all that existed; they were
striking, they were promising, but they didn't unveil the idol.
That great intellectual feat was obviously to have formed his
climax. She said nothing more, nothing to enlighten me as to the
state of her own knowledge--the knowledge for the acquisition of
which I had fancied her prodigiously acting. This was above all
what I wanted to know: had SHE seen the idol unveiled? Had there
been a private ceremony for a palpitating audience of one? For
what else but that ceremony had the nuptials taken place? I didn't
like as yet to press her, though when I thought of what had passed
between us on the subject in Corvick's absence her reticence
surprised me.
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