I dare
say I always shall--but I couldn't live with you--it would break my heart
if we should come to hate one another. Don't think any more about it.
I'll have gone to-morrow, and I'll try to arrange not to come back till
you're through. It will be all right."
"Francey, it's such a foolish thing to quarrel about."
"It's everything," she said simply.
She turned to go. Even then he could have stopped her. He could have
said: "Francey, Christine died this morning!" and their sad enmity might
have melted in grief and pity. But what she had said was true. It was
everything. And his reason, his will, rising up out of the general ruin,
monstrous and powerful, stood like an admonishing shadow at his elbow.
"It's much better. There's nothing to make a coward of you now. You're
free."
He half held out his hand, but it was only a convulsive, dying movement.
He let her go.
PART III
I
1
As to Gyp Labelle, if she had known the part she played in their lives,
which in the nature of things was not possible, she would have broken
into that famous laugh of hers.
To her, at any rate, it would have seemed immensely, excruciatingly funny.
As the result of an exchange of two remarkably casual notes they met at
Brown's for dinner. Brown's had occurred to both of them as a natural
meeting-place. Cosgrave, it is true, had only dined there once and that
free (as a friend of Brown's friend), but the impression made upon a
stomach accustomed to Soho and tea-shop fare had been indelible.
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