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Page 29
Francesca slipped out without speaking and went, unheard, to her own
room. She felt guilty because she had discerned something of which Rose
herself was as yet entirely unconscious. With the instinctive sex-
loyalty that distinguishes fine women from the other sort, Madame hoped
that Allison did not know.
"And so," she said to herself, "Love has come back to my house, after
many years of absence. I wonder if he cares? He must, oh, he must!"
Francesca had no selfish thought of her own loneliness, if her Rose
should go away. Though her own heart was forever in the keeping of a
distant grave, she could still be glad of another's joy.
Rose turned away from the piano and Allison put his violin into the
case. "It's late," he said, regretfully, "and you must be tired."
"Perhaps I am, but I don't know it."
"You respond so fully to the music that it is a great pleasure to play
with you. I wish I could always have you as my accompanist."
"I do, too," murmured Rose, turning her face away. The deep colour
mounted to the roots of her hair and he studied her impersonally, as he
would have studied any other lovely thing.
"Why?" he began, then laughed.
"Why what?" asked Rose, quickly.
"I was about to ask you a very foolish question."
"Don't hesitate," she said. "Most questions are foolish."
"This is worse--it's idiotic. I was going to ask you why you hadn't
married."
With a sharp stab at the heart, Rose noted the past tense. "Why haven't
you?" she queried, forcing a smile.
"There is only one answer to that question, and yet people keep on
asking it. They might as well ask why you don't buy an automobile."
"Well?" continued Rose, inquiringly.
"Because 'the not impossible she,' or 'he,' hasn't come, that's all."
"Perhaps only one knows," she suggested.
"No," replied Allison, "in any true mating, they both know--they must."
There was a long pause. A smouldering log, in the fireplace, broke and
fell into the embers. The dying flame took new life and the warm glow
filled the room.
"Is that why people don't buy automobiles?" queried Rose, chiefly
because she did not know what else to say.
"The answer to that is that they do."
"Sounds as if you might have taken it from Alice in Wonderland," she
commented. "Maybe they've had to give each other up," she concluded,
enigmatically.
"People who will give each other up should be obliged to do it," he
returned. "May I leave my violin here? I'll be coming again so soon."
"Surely. I hope you will."
"Good-night." He took her hand for a moment, in his warm, steady clasp,
and subtly, Rose answered to the man--not the violin. She was deathly
white when the door closed, and she trembled all the way up-stairs.
When she saw herself in the mirror, she was startled, for, in her
ghostly pallor, her deep eyes burned like stars. She knew, now. The
woman who had so hungered for Life had suddenly come face to face with
its utmost wonder; its highest gift of joy--or pain.
The heart of a man is divided into many compartments, mostly isolated.
Sometimes there is a door between two of them, or even three may be
joined, but usually, each one is complete in itself. Within the
different chambers his soul sojourns as it will, since immeasurably
beyond woman, he possesses the power of detachment, of intermittence.
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