She was poking fun
at him, at herself, at death. She was making him a partner of thieves
and loose women. And yet:
"It must not make you sad at all. When you see it you laugh--just as
you laugh when I dance because I dance so ver' bad. Look 'ere, I 'ave
something that you give me too." She dived back into the box and
brought out a shilling lying side by side with the pearl in the palm of
her open hand. "You tell 'er--that was all poor Gyp was worth to you,
Monsieur Robert."
He had taken it. She tried to laugh out loud, triumphantly, the famous
laugh. And then grey agony had her by the throat. She turned her face
from him to the wall.
He felt that the old woman had risen. She was moving towards them. He
said quietly:
"At least I can relieve you."
She made a passionate, absolute gesture of refusal. An astonished
nurse had entered. He gave brief instructions. He said good-night,
not looking at the limp, quiet figure on the bed, and went out.
He knew that he had seemed competent, unhurried and unmoved as befitted
a man to whom death was the most salient feature of life.
But he knew also that he had fled from her.
In the crowd that went with him that night were Francey Wilmot and
Connie Edwards and Cosgrave and all the people who had made up his
youth. There were little old women who were Christines, and even James
Stonehouse was there, tragically and hopefully in search of something
that he had never found.
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