“Do you mean to ask me if my feelings are unchanged in respect of that ruffian--that wretch who killed the best man that ever lived in the world? If that is your question I can answer you. I stand here and tell you that no night passes without my cursing him and all that belongs to him. If he has a brother--if he has a wife--if he has a child--may they all suffer what”--
“No, no, no, no; for God's sake, don't say those words, Claude. You do not know what they mean. You cannot know.”
She had sprung from her chair and had caught the hand which he had clenched fiercely as he spoke.
“You cannot tell who it is that you are cursing,” she said imploringly. “No one can tell. He may have a wife--a child--would you have them suffer for the crime of their father?”
“I would have them suffer. It is not I, but God, who said 'unto the third and fourth generation.' I am on the side of God.”
He started as she flung his hand from her--the fingers were still bent--and walked across the room, striking her palms together passionately.
He started. There was a pause before he said slowly and not without tenderness--the tenderness of the sentimentalist, not the lover:
“How young we both were in those days! I'm sure we both believed most fervently that we were in love. Alas! alas! But in affairs like these the statute of limitations is automatic in its working. Nature has decreed, so we are told, that in the course of seven years every particle of that work which we call man becomes dissolved; so that nothing whatever of the man whom we see to-day is a survival of the man whom we knew seven years ago.”
“Ah, that is true--so much we know to be true,” she cried, and in her voice there was a note of tenderness.
She looked across the room and saw that his eyes were not turned toward her. They were turned toward the window. She saw that he was staring into the garden, and on his face there was an expression of surprise, mingled with doubt.
She took a few steps to one side, and her hand made a little spasmodic grasp for the curtain, when she had seen all that he saw.
Out there a charming picture presented itself against a background of bare trees, and a blue autumn sky from which the sun had just departed. A tall girl, wearing a white dress and crowned with shining golden hair, stood on the grass, while above and around her and at her feet scores of pigeons flew and circled and strutted. She was encircled with moving plumage--snow-white, delicate mauve, slate blue--some trembling poised about her head, some with their wings drawn up as they were in the act of alighting, others curving in front of her, and now and again letting themselves drop daintily upon her shoulders, and perching upon the finger which she held out to them. All the time she was laughing and crooning to them in a musical tone.