I’m dreadfully sorry for you.”
On a sudden Mary’s haggard, weather-beaten face was lit by a smile that broke on her large red mouth; and upon my word at that moment she was beautiful.
“You need not be.
I was rather low a little while ago, but now I’ve had a good cry I feel better.
Notwithstanding all the pain, all the unhappiness this affair has caused me, I wouldn’t have missed it for all the world.
For those few moments of ecstasy my love has brought me I would be willing to live all my life over again.
And I think he’d tell you the same thing.
Oh, it’s been so infinitely worth while.”
I could not help but be moved.
“There’s no doubt about it,” I said. “That’s love all right.”
“Yes, it’s love, and we’ve just got to go through with it.
There’s no way out.”
And now with this tragic suddenness the way out had come.
I turned a little to look at Mary and she, feeling my eyes upon her, turned too.
There was a smile on her lips.
“Why did you come here tonight?
It must be awful for you.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“What could I do?
I read the news in the evening paper while I was dressing.
He’d asked me not to ring up the nursing-home on account of his wife.
It’s death to me.
Death.
I had to come.
We’d been engaged for a month.
What excuse could I give Tom?
I’m not supposed to have seen Gerrard for two years.
Do you know that for twenty years we’ve written to one another every day?”
Her lower lip trembled a little, but she bit it and for a moment her face was twisted to a strange grimace; then with a smile she pulled herself together. “He was everything I had in the world, but I couldn’t let the party down, could I?
He always said I had a social sense.”
“Happily we shall break up early and you can go home.”
“I don’t want to go home.
I don’t want to be alone.
I daren’t cry because my eyes will get red and swollen, and we’ve got a lot of people lunching with us tomorrow. Will you come, by the way?
I want an extra man. I must be in good form; Tom expects to get a commission for a portrait out of it.”
“By George, you’ve got courage.”
“D’you think so?
I’m heartbroken, you know. I suppose that’s what makes it easier for me.
Gerrard would have liked me to put a good face on it.
He would have appreciated the irony of the situation.
It’s the sort of thing he always thought the French novelists described so well.”