"But will that matter to you? If you loved Sassoon, I shall always in your mind stand as the indirect cause of his death! It is for this reason I am going away--I could not bear to look in your accusing eyes and hear you say it. Nor could I bear to stay here, a reminder to you of such a horror. If you love me, you will write and call me back to you. Oh, Judith, Judith, my own dear love! I pray God you will!"
She put the letter down and laid her face upon it. "Beauty! Beauty!" she whispered, dry-eyed. "I never knew! I never knew! But it would have made no difference, darling. I would have forgiven you anything--everything! You know that, now, dear! You have been certain of it all these years that have been so empty, empty to me!"
But when the faded rose-colored gown and the poor time-yellowed slippers had been laid back in the haircloth trunk; when, her door once more unbolted, she lay in her bed in the dim glow of the reading-lamp, with her curling silvery hair drifting across the pillow and the letter beneath it, at last the tears came coursing down her cheeks.
And with the loosening of her tears, gradually and softly came joy--infinitely deeper than the anguish and sense of betrayal. It poured upon her like a trembling flood. Long, long ago he had gone out of the world--it was only his memory that counted to her. Now that could no longer spell pain or emptiness or denial. It was engoldened by a new light, and in that light she would walk gently and smilingly to the end.
She found the slender golden chain that hung about her neck and opened the little black locket with its circlet of laureled pearls. And as she gazed at the face it held, which time had not touched with change, the sound of Shirley's harp came softly in through the window. She was playing an old-fashioned song, of the sort she knew her mother loved best:
"Darling, I am growing old. Silver threads among the gold Shine upon my brow to-day; Life is fading fast away. But, my darling, you will be Always young and fair to me."
Outside the leaves rustled, the birds called and the crickets sang their unending epithalamia of summer nights, and on this tone-background the melody rose tenderly and lingeringly like a haunting perfume of pressed flowers. She smiled and lifted the locket to her face, whispering the words of the refrain: