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And so, gradually, I grew into her life and she grew into mine. I was forty-five, she twenty-five. In the back of my mind was always a sense of the enormity of her offense against Perry. In my hottest moments I said to myself that she had sacrificed his life to her selfishness; she might have been a Borgia or a Medici.

Yet when I was with her my resentment faded; one could as little hold rancor against a child.

Thus the months passed, and it was in the autumn, I remember, that a conversation occurred which opened new vistas. She had been showing me a parchment lamp-shade which she had painted. There was a peacock with a spreading tail, and as she held the shade over the lamp the light shone through and turned every feathered eye into a glittering jewel. Rosalie wore one of her purple robes, and I can see her now as I shut my eyes, as glowing and gorgeous as some of those unrivaled masterpieces in the Pitti Palace.

“Jim Crow,” she said, “I shall do a parrot next–all red and blue, with white rings round his eyes.”

“You will never do anything better than that peacock.”

“Shan’t I?” She left the shade over the lamp and sat down. “Do you think I shall paint peacocks and parrots for the rest of my life, Jim Crow?”

“What would you like to do?” I asked her.

“Travel.” She was eager. “Do you know, I have never been to Europe? Perry used to tell me about it–Botticelli and Raphael–and Michaelangelo–“

“We had a great time,” I said, remembering it all–that breathless search for beauty.

“He promised that some day he and I would go–together.”

“Poor Perry!”

She rose restlessly.

“Oh, take me out somewhere, Jim Crow! I feel as if this little house would stifle me.”

We motored to the country club. She wore the color which she now affected, a close little hat and a straight frock. People stared at her. I think she was aware of their admiration and liked it.

She smiled at me as she sat down at the table. “I always love to come with you, Jim Crow.”

“Why?”

“You do things so well, and you’re such a darling.”

I do not believe that it was intended as flattery. I am sure that she meant it. She was happy because of the lights and the lovely old room with its cavernous fireplace and its English chintzes; and out of her happiness she spoke.

She could not, of course, know the effect of her words on me. No one had ever called me a darling or had thought that I did things well.

She used, too, to tell me things about my looks. “You’d be like one of those distinguished gentlemen of Vandyke’s if you’d wear a ruff and leave off your eye-glasses.”

I wonder if you know how it seemed to have a child like that saying such things. For she was more than a child, she was a beautiful woman, and everything surrounding her was beautiful. And there had been a great many gray years before I met Perry and before the money came which made pleasant living possible.

“I like you because you are strong,” was another of her tributes.

“How do you know I am strong?”

“Well, you look it. And not many men could have carried me so easily up-stairs.”

She had sprained her ankle in getting out of my car on the night that we had dined at the country club. She had worn high-heeled slippers and had stepped on a pebble.

It was on that night that I first faced the fact that I cared for her. In my arms she had clung to me like a child, her hair had swept my cheek, there had been the fragrance of violets.

I did not want to care for her. I remembered Perry–the burned toast which had seemed to mark the beginning of their tragedy–those last dreadful days. I knew that Perry’s fate would not be mine; there would be no need to sell bread to buy hyacinths. There was money enough and to spare, money to let her live in the enjoyment of the things she craved; money enough to–travel.