XIV.

She came, followed by a groom.  She greeted Paul with a smile that made his heart leap with a wild hope.  Her groom led Bezigue away to the stables.

‘Thank you,’ said Paul.

‘For what?’

‘For everything.  For coming.  For that smile.’

‘Oh.’

They walked about the garden.  ’It is lovely.  The prettiest garden of the neighbourhood,’ she said.  ’Show me where the irises grow, by the pond.’  And when they had arrived there, ’They do look like princesses, don’t they?  Your little friend had some perceptions.  Show me where you and she used to sit down.  I am tired.’

He led her into a corner of the rosery.  She sank upon the turf.

‘It is nice here,’ she said, ’and quite shut in.  One would never know there was a house so near.’

She had taken off one of her gloves.  Her soft white hand lay languidly in her lap.  Suddenly Paul seized it, and kissed it—­furiously—­again and again.  She yielded it.  It was sweet to smell, and warm.  ’My God, how I love you, how I love you!’ he murmured.

When he looked up, she was smiling.  ’Oh, you are radiant!  You are divine!’ he cried.  And then her eyes filled with tears.  ’What is it?  What is it?  You are unhappy?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said.  ’But to think—­to think that after all these years of misery, of heartbreak, it should end like this, here.’

‘Here?’ he questioned.

’I am glad your bronchitis is better, but you can invent the most awful fibs,’ she said.

He looked at her, while the universe whirled round him.

‘Helene!’

‘Paul!’

XV.

Her divorce didn’t carry with it the right to marry again.  But she said, ’We can go on making believe we’re married.  Things one does in play are always so much nicer than real things.’  And when he spoke of the ‘world,’ she answered, ’I have nothing to fear or to hope from the world.  It has done its worst by me already.’

As they walked back to the house for luncheon, Paul looked into her face, and said, ‘I can’t believe my eyes, you know.’

She smiled and took his arm.  ‘J’ t’aime tant,’ she whispered.

‘And now I can’t believe my ears!’

And this would appear to be the end, but I suppose it can’t be, for everybody says nowadays that nothing ever ends happily here below.