y I knocked and rang, and again knocked
at the door of the house she occupied in South Street, with the
intention of making one last appeal to her to live--if, indeed, it was
death she had in mind. I had let her go from me and instantly a hundred
neglected things had come into my head. I could go away with her, I
could threaten to die with her; it seemed to me that nothing in all the
world mattered if only I could thrust back the dark hand of death to
which she had so manifestly turned. I knew, I knew all along that her
extorted promise would not bind her. I knew and I let the faintest
shadow of uncertainty weaken and restrain me. And I went to her too
late. I saw instantly that I was too late when the door opened and
showed me the scared face of a young footman whose eyes were red with
tears.

"Are you Doctor----?" he asked of my silence.

"I want----" I said. "I must speak to Lady Mary."

He was wordless for a moment. "She--she died, sir," he said. "She's died
suddenly." His face quivered, he was blubbering. He couldn't say
anything more; he stood snivelling in the doorway.

For some moments I remained confronting him as if I would dispute his
words. Some things the mind contests in the face of invincible
conviction. One wants to thrust back time....

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

THE ARRAIGNMENT OF JEALOUSY

Sec. 1

I sit here in this graciously proportioned little room which I shall
leave for ever next week, for already your mother begins to pack for
England again. I look out upon the neat French garden that I have
watched the summer round, and before me is the pile of manuscript that
has grown here, the story of my friendship and love for Mary and of its
tragic end, and of all the changes of my beliefs and purposes that have
arisen out of that. I had meant it to be the story of my life, but how
little of my life is in it! It gives, at most, certain acute points,
certain salient aspects. I begin to realize for the first time how thin
and suggestive and sketchy a thing any novel or biography must be. How
we must simplify! How little can we convey the fullness of life, the
glittering interests, the interweaving secondary aspects, the dawns and
dreams and double refractions of experience! Even Mary, of whom I have
labored to tell you, seems not so much expressed as hidden beneath these
corrected sheets. She who was so abundantly living, who could love like
a burst of sunshine and give herself as God gives the