FullReads

6th October.

I am still living constantly in the past, and the fantastic feeling, whenever I enter a church or turn a corner that I shall meet Lorimer again, has grown into a settled conviction. Yes, I shall meet him, and in Bruges…. It is strange how an episode which one has thrust away out of sight and forgotten for years will be started back into renewed life by the merest trifle. And for the last week it has all been as vivid as if it happened yesterday. To-night I have been putting questions to myself–so far with no very satisfactory answer. Was it a boyish infatuation after all? Has it passed away as utterly as I believed? I can see her face now as I sit by the fire with the finest precision of detail. I can hear her voice, that soft, low voice, which was none the less sweet for its modulation of sadness. I think there are no women like her now-a-days–none, none! Did she marry Lorimer? and if not–? It seems strange now that we should have both been so attracted, and yet not strange when one considers it. At least we were never jealous of one another. How the details rush back upon one! I think we must have fallen in love with her at the same moment–for we were together when we saw her for the first time, we were together when we went first to call on her in the Rue d’Alva–I doubt if we ever saw her except together. It was soon after we began to get intimate that she wore white again. She told us that we had given her back her youth. She joined our sketching expeditions with the most supreme contempt for les convenances ; when she was not fluttering round, passing from Lorimer’s canvas to mine with her sweetly inconsequent criticism, she sat in the long grass and read to us–Andre Chenier and Lamartine. In the evening we went to see her; she denied herself to the rest of the world, and we sat for hours in that ancient room in the delicious twilight, while she sang to us–she sang divinely–little French chansons, gay and sad, and snatches of operette. How we adored her! I think she knew from the first how it would be and postponed it as long as she could. But at last she saw that it was inevitable…. I remember the last evening that we were there–remember–shall I ever forget it? We had stayed beyond our usual hour and when we rose to go we all of us knew that those pleasant irresponsible evenings had come to an end. And both Lorimer and I stood for a moment on the threshold before we said good-night, feeling I suppose that one of us was there for the last time.

And how graceful, how gracious she was as she held out one little white hand to Lorimer and one to me. ‘Good-night, dear friends,’ she said, ‘I like you both so much–so much. Believe me, I am grateful to you both–for having given me back my faith in life, in friendship, believe that, will you not, mes amis ?’ Then for just one delirious moment her eyes met mine and it seemed to me–ah, well, after all it was Lorimer she loved.

7th October.

It seems a Quixotic piece of folly now, our proposal we would neither take advantage of the other, but we both of us must speak. We wrote to her at the same time and likely enough, in the same words, we posted our letters by the same post. To-day I had the curiosity to take out her answer to me from my desk, and I read it quite calmly and dispassionately, the poor yellow letter with the faded ink, which wrote ‘Finis’ to my youth and made a man of me.