She looked round that place of rush chairs, cane tables and newspapers.
She saw me and opened her lips.
She saw the man who was talking to me. She stuck her hands over her face as if she wished to push her eyes out.
And she was not there any more.
I could not move; I could not stir a finger.
And then that man said:
"By Jove: Florry Hurlbird."
He turned upon me with an oily and uneasy sound meant for a laugh.
He was really going to ingratiate himself with me.
"Do you know who that is?" he asked.
"The last time I saw that girl she was coming out of the bedroom of a young man called Jimmy at five o'clock in the morning.
In my house at Ledbury.
You saw her recognize me."
He was standing on his feet, looking down at me.
I don't know what I looked like.
At any rate, he gave a sort of gurgle and then stuttered:
"Oh, I say...." Those were the last words I ever heard of Mr Bagshawe's.
A long time afterwards I pulled myself out of the lounge and went up to Florence's room.
She had not locked the door—for the first time of our married life.
She was lying, quite respectably arranged, unlike Mrs Maidan, on her bed.
She had a little phial that rightly should have contained nitrate of amyl, in her right hand.
That was on the 4th of August, 1913.
PART III
I
THE odd thing is that what sticks out in my recollection of the rest of that evening was Leonora's saying:
"Of course you might marry her," and, when I asked whom, she answered:
"The girl."
Now that is to me a very amazing thing—amazing for the light of possibilities that it casts into the human heart.
For I had never had the slightest conscious idea of marrying the girl; I never had the slightest idea even of caring for her.
I must have talked in an odd way, as people do who are recovering from an anaesthetic.
It is as if one had a dual personality, the one I being entirely unconscious of the other.
I had thought nothing; I had said such an extraordinary thing.
I don't know that analysis of my own psychology matters at all to this story.
I should say that it didn't or, at any rate, that I had given enough of it.
But that odd remark of mine had a strong influence upon what came after.
I mean, that Leonora would probably never have spoken to me at all about Florence's relations with Edward if I hadn't said, two hours after my wife's death:
"Now I can marry the girl."
She had, then, taken it for granted that I had been suffering all that she had been suffering, or, at least, that I had permitted all that she had permitted.
So that, a month ago, about a week after the funeral of poor Edward, she could say to me in the most natural way in the world—I had been talking about the duration of my stay at Branshaw—she said with her clear, reflective intonation:
"Oh, stop here for ever and ever if you can."
And then she added, "You couldn't be more of a brother to me, or more of a counsellor, or more of a support.
You are all the consolation I have in the world.
And isn't it odd to think that if your wife hadn't been my husband's mistress, you would probably never have been here at all?"
That was how I got the news—full in the face, like that.
I didn't say anything and I don't suppose I felt anything, unless maybe it was with that mysterious and unconscious self that underlies most people.
Perhaps one day when I am unconscious or walking in my sleep I may go and spit upon poor Edward's grave.
It seems about the most unlikely thing I could do; but there it is.
No, I remember no emotion of any sort, but just the clear feeling that one has from time to time when one hears that some Mrs So-and-So is au mieux with a certain gentleman.
It made things plainer, suddenly, to my curiosity.
It was as if I thought, at that moment, of a windy November evening, that, when I came to think it over afterwards, a dozen unexplained things would fit themselves into place.