“The only thing I regret,” said Joyce, during his farewell visit, “is that I shall be cutting myself off from you. I suppose every one is entitled to a grievance. And this is mine. Do you know you are the only friend I have in the world?”
As Yvonne knew that the world was very big and that she herself was very small, the fact somewhat awed her. She regarded him pityingly for a moment “What a dreadful thing it must be to feel alone like that.”
“I have n’t felt it so, since I met you,” said Joyce.
“But you won’t have even me, any more. I wish I could help you.”
“Help me? Why, you ‘ve raised me out of the gutter, Madame Latour.”
“Oh, don’t call me ‘Madame Latour,’” she said, “I don’t call you ‘Mr. Joyce.’ I am ‘Yvonne’ to all my friends. You used to call me ‘Yvonne’ once.”
“You were not my benefactress then,” said Joyce.
“Please don’t call me hard names,” she returned whimsically, “or I shall be afraid of you, as I used to be.”
“Yes. Weren’t you dreadfully clever? I was always afraid you would think me silly. And then, often I could not quite understand what you were saying--how much you meant of what you said. Don’t you see?”
“I see I must have been insufferable,” he replied. “It makes what you are to me now all the more beautiful. But I scarcely dare call you ‘Yvonne’--don’t you understand? But it would gladden me to write it. May I write to you on my pilgrimage?”
“It would be so good of you, if you would,” she answered eagerly. “I do love people to write to me.”
She had unconsciously slipped from her fairy-godmother attitude. Her simple mind could not look upon welcoming his letters as an act of graciousness.
“Would you sing to me once more before I go?” he asked, a little later. “I don’t know when I shall see you again, and I should like to carry away a song of yours to cheer me.”
She sat down at the piano and sang Gounod’s Serenade. Something in its yearning tenderness touched the man in his softened mood. The pure passion of Yvonne’s voice pierced through the thick layers of shame and dead hopes and deadening memories that had encrusted round his heart, and met it in a tiny thrill. He leaned back in his chair, staring at the walls, which grew misty before his eyes. The scene changed and he was back again in his mother’s house and Yvonne was singing this song. The benumbing spell that had kept him dry-eyed since the news came to him of his mother’s death, was lifted for the moment. But, only when a sudden silence broke the charm, was he aware that tears were on his face.