I
HE had become very ill--could hardly move from where he lay; and she,
who loved him, and was to have married him, and spent all her waking
hours in thinking what she could do for him, persuaded him to have a
telephone installed and brought to his bedside so that he and she could
talk, and he could talk with others, too. Every night he rang her up and
they had a long conversation; many times in the day also. Nothing, as it
happened, could have saved his life, but this modern device lightened
his last weeks.
His death, although it blasted her hopes, made no difference to her
devotion. She merely installed his memory in the place of his rich
personality and loved that. He, almost more than ever, was her standard.
What he would have liked, she did; what he would have disliked, she left
undone. Although dead, he swayed her utterly, and under his dominion she
was equable and gentle, although broken at heart. She took all things as
they came, since how could anything matter now that everything that
mattered was over?
One perplexity only had power to trouble her, and that was the wonder,
the amazement, the horror, not only that so much knowledge and
kindliness and sympathy and all that made for the world's good and
happiness should be so wantonly extinguished; but that no touch of the
vanished hand should be permitted to the one soul (now left behind) with
whom his soul had been fused. This she could neither understand nor
forgive. Religious she had never been in the ordinary sense, although
such religion as must sway a true idealistic lover was hers; but now she
broke even from such slender ties as had held her to orthodoxy. She
threw off the creed of her parents as naturally and simply as if it were
a borrowed garment, and sank into her sorrow, which was also her joy,
without another thought of here or hereafter.
So it went on for a year or so, during which time his house had remained
empty, save for a caretaker,--for she (who was rich) could not bear that
any one else should live there,--and his room exactly as he had died in
it.