His face lighted up. He pulled in his chair to me.
“Her hands—did you notice her hands? I have a drawing of them somewhere.
I’ll show it to you——” He stopped short: Then—“What is your name?” he
asked me.
“Jenny. Jenny Summer.”
He considered that fact for a moment and put it aside again.
“I’d like you to see it. Anita will want it for that damned scrap-book
of hers. She’ll be worrying at me—they all will.”
“You won’t let it go?” I said quickly.
He shook his head.
“No. But they can’t understand why. They can’t understand anything. They
thought I was mad just now. So I was, for that matter. To see her again,
you know—to see her again——”
“I know,” I said.
He laughed nervously.
“Hallucination, of course. Thought transference. What you please. They’d
say so. Do you think so? And I’d been thinking of my picture of her. Oh,
I admit it. So we must look at the matter in the light of common-sense.”
“But I saw her too.”
His eyes softened, and his voice.
“Yes. You were there. That’s comfort. You saw her too—standing there
with her dear hands full of cowslips——”
“A torch,” I said.
“Cowslips——” he checked on the word. “_What?_”
“She was carrying a candle,” I insisted. “It had just been lighted. She
was holding it so carefully.”
We stared at each other.
“You’re sure?”
“Sure.”
He fell back wearily in his chair.
“What’s the good of talking? She’s dead. That’s the end of it. I was
dreaming. Of course. But when you said that you saw, for a moment I
believed——What does it matter? What does it matter anyway? But her hands
were full of cowslips.”
I turned to him eagerly. I knew what to say. It was as if the words were
being whispered to me.
“That was your Madala Grey. But mine—how could she be the same? Oh,
can’t you see? We’ve never seen the real Madala Grey. She gave—she
became—to each of us—what we wanted most. She wrote down our dreams. She
_was_ our dreams. Can’t you see what she meant to my cousin? Anita toils
and slaves for her little bit of greatness. But _she_ was born royal.
That’s why Anita hates her so—hates her and worships her. Why, she’s
been a sort of star to you all—a symbol—a legend—
“But the real Madala Grey—she wasn’t like that. She was just a girl. She
was hungry all the time. She was wanting her human life. And he, the man
they laugh at, ‘the thing she married,’ he did love that real Madala
Grey. Why, he didn’t even know of the legend. Don’t you see that that
was what she wanted? She could take from him as well as give. Life—the
bread and wine—they shared it. Oh, and it’s him I pity now, not you. Not
you,” I said again, while my heart ached over him. “You—can’t you see
what she showed you? Not herself——”
“What then?” he said harshly.