When we met I thought he had changed very little; I, he insisted,
looked in splendid health. It was good to hear his voice again, and as
we sat and chatted about what life still held for us, we felt that it
was pleasant to be alive in the bright spring weather.
We stayed in Paris together a week, and then I went for a week to Ept
with him, but first of all we went to the cemetery at Sèvres, where
Boris lay.
“Shall we place the ‘Fates’ in the little grove above him?” Jack asked,
and I answered—
“I think only the ‘Madonna’ should watch over Boris’ grave.” But Jack
was none the better for my home-coming. The dreams of which he could
not retain even the least definite outline continued, and he said that
at times the sense of breathless expectancy was suffocating.
“You see I do you harm and not good,” I said. “Try a change without
me.” So he started alone for a ramble among the Channel Islands, and I
went back to Paris. I had not yet entered Boris’ house, now mine, since
my return, but I knew it must be done. It had been kept in order by
Jack; there were servants there, so I gave up my own apartment and went
there to live. Instead of the agitation I had feared, I found myself
able to paint there tranquilly. I visited all the rooms—all but one.
I could not bring myself to enter the marble room where Geneviève lay,
and yet I felt the longing growing daily to look upon her face, to
kneel beside her.
One April afternoon, I lay dreaming in the smoking-room, just as
I had lain two years before, and mechanically I looked among the
tawny Eastern rugs for the wolf-skin. At last I distinguished the
pointed ears and flat cruel head, and I thought of my dream where
I saw Geneviève lying beside it. The helmets still hung against
the threadbare tapestry, among them the old Spanish morion which I
remembered Geneviève had once put on when we were amusing ourselves
with the ancient bits of mail. I turned my eyes to the spinet; every
yellow key seemed eloquent of her caressing hand, and I rose, drawn
by the strength of my life’s passion to the sealed door of the marble
room. The heavy doors swung inward under my trembling hands. Sunlight
poured through the window, tipping with gold the wings of Cupid, and
lingered like a nimbus over the brows of the Madonna. Her tender face
bent in compassion over a marble form so exquisitely pure that I knelt
and signed myself. Geneviève lay in the shadow under the Madonna, and
yet, through her white arms, I saw the pale azure vein, and beneath her
softly clasped hands the folds of her dress were tinged with rose, as
if from some faint warm light within her breast.
Bending, with a breaking heart, I touched the marble drapery with my
lips, then crept back into the silent house.
A maid came and brought me a letter, and I sat down in the little
conservatory to read it; but as I was about to break the seal, seeing
the girl lingering, I asked her what she wanted.
She stammered something about a white rabbit that had been caught in
the house, and asked what should be done with it. I told her to let it
loose in the walled garden behind the house, and opened my letter. It
was from Jack, but so incoherent that I thought he must have lost his
reason. It was nothing but a series of prayers to me not to leave the
house until he could get back; he could not tell me why, there were the
dreams, he said—he could explain nothing, but he was sure that I must
not leave the house in the Rue Sainte-Cécile.
As I finished reading I raised my eyes and saw the same maid-servant
standing in the doorway holding a glass dish in which two gold-fish
were swimming: “Put them back into the tank and tell me what you mean
by interrupting me,” I said.
With a half-suppressed whimper she emptied water and fish into an
aquarium at the end of the conservatory, and turning to me asked my
permission to leave my service. She said people were playing tricks on
her, evidently with a design of getting her into trouble; the marble
rabbit had been stolen and a live one had been brought into the house;
the two beautiful marble fish were gone, and she had just found those
common live things flopping on the dining-room floor. I reassured her
and sent her away, saying I would look about myself. I went into the
studio; there was nothing there but my canvases and some casts, except
the marble of the Easter lily. I saw it on a table across the room.
Then I strode angrily over to it. But the flower I lifted from the
table was fresh and fragile and filled the air with perfume.
Then suddenly I comprehended, and sprang through the hallway to the
marble room. The doors flew open, the sunlight streamed into my face,
and through it, in a heavenly glory, the Madonna smiled, as Geneviève
lifted her flushed face from her marble couch and opened her sleepy
eyes.