This
mercy didn't prevent its hurling at me the largest finest coldest
"Never!" I had yet, in the course of a life that had known denials,
had to take full in the face. I took it and was aware that with
the hard blow the tears had come into my eyes. So for a while we
sat and looked at each other; after which I slowly rose, I was
wondering if some day she would accept me; but this was not what I
brought out. I said as I smoothed down my hat: "I know what to
think then. It's nothing!"
A remote disdainful pity for me gathered in her dim smile; then she
spoke in a voice that I hear at this hour: "It's my LIFE!" As I
stood at the door she added: "You've insulted him!"
"Do you mean Vereker?"
"I mean the Dead!"
I recognised when I reached the street the justice of her charge.
Yes, it was her life--I recognised that too; but her life none the
less made room with the lapse of time for another interest. A year
and a half after Corvick's death she published in a single volume
her second novel, "Overmastered," which I pounced on in the hope of
finding in it some tell-tale echo or some peeping face. All I
found was a much better book than her younger performance, showing
I thought the better company she had kept. As a tissue tolerably
intricate it was a carpet with a figure of its own; but the figure
was not the figure I was looking for.
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