"_Bon jour_" Marie repeated when the witch stood beside the table. "You
two have met before, I believe?"
Spike did not rise. He held his head down and looked up at the witch
from under his brows. Her gray old face was lined more deeply than
usual. The rims of her lashless eyes were pink as if she had been
weeping.
Her voluminous dress was of gray and the skirt hung in its many folds
almost gracefully; but she had put over the dress a sort of dingy
smock, over this a man's velvet jacket, over this a short gray cape
with arm-holes. She looked as if she had wrapped herself in blankets.
Her black hair--she wore no hat--was parted in the middle and pulled
tightly over her long skull and wound on each side in an untidy
roll. Her glance struck quickly into Marie's eyes and then back into
Flecker's. She seemed frightened and at the same time angry, as if
here were something she feared, but must know.
"He does not want to remember," the witch answered Marie.
Spike turned his head away.
"When you wept I wept," the witch said. "When you struggled with
indecision I was with you in spirit. Ah, Spike Flecker, in me you have
made a good friend!"
"Won't you sit down?" urged Marie. "Do sit down with us!"
The witch leaned against the table. She lifted her free arm and aimed a
long finger at Spike.
"Your decision! Tell me now!"
"He could not decide. You know that perfectly well!" the girl put in
calmly.
"Let him speak for himself!"
"I could not decide," Spike confessed. "But it was not so much that I
could not decide. I found when I might have anything, I had everything!"
"What a lie!"
"I don't think it is a lie," Spike told her humbly. "It has a sort of
truth. I have a feeling that life is narrow and not very long. When I
tried to reach out of it, I found it was full.... I don't know how to
say it. I am all bewildered. It seems there is a reason in my life's
lack of reason.... I don't know how to think any more. I had made a
kind of world and now it is gone and I have to start over."
Marie put her hand on his arm in sympathy. The witch looked into
Marie's face and for a moment her eyes were the eyes of an old beggar.
"I mean," Spike said, "that in a sort of way I had everything.... I had
life and life is what it is.... I had this and I had that and also I
had the lack of things.... If I had everything I would not have this
lack of things.... And yet it is an important something--this lack of
something! And so if I had everything I would not, of course, have
everything. It is hard to say. I had life and life is what it is....
And I think it is life I want."
"I thought you were different! In spite of your powerful imagination
you are at bottom like all the others!"
"I _hope_ so!" said Spike.