Part 101 (2/2)
”Never, my lord.”
”I have seen you somewhere.”
”I was an actress once. And I am a friend of John's.”
”Of John's? Then you are----”
”I am Glory.”
”Glory! And so we meet at last, dear lady! But I _have_ seen you before.
When he spoke of you, but did not bring you to see me, I took a stolen glance at the theatre myself----”
”I have left it, my lord.”
”Left it?”
And then she told him what she had done. His old eyes glistened and his head sank into his breast.
”It wasn't that I came to talk about, my lord, but another and more painful matter.”
”Can I relieve you of the burden of your message, my child? It has reached me already. It is in all the morning newspapers.”
”I didn't think of that. Still the doctor told me to----”
”What does the doctor say about him?”
”He says----”
”Yes?”
”He says we are going to lose him.”
”I have sent for a great surgeon--But no doubt it is past help. Poor boy! It seems only yesterday he came up to London so full of hope and expectation. I can see him now with his great eyes, sitting in that chair you occupy, talking of his plans and purposes. Poor John! To think he should come to this! But these tumultuous souls whose hearts are battlefields, when the battle is over what can be left but a waste?”
Glory's eyes had dried of themselves and she was looking at the old man with an expression of pain, but he went on without observing her:
”It is one of the dark riddles of the inscrutable Power which rules over life that the good man can go under like that, while the evil one lives and prospers.”
He rose and walked to and fro before the fireplace. ”Ah, well! The years bring me an ever-deepening sadness, an ever-increasing sense of our impotence to diminish, the infinite sorrow of the world.”
Then he looked down at Glory and said: ”But I can hardly forgive him that he has thrown away so much for so little. And when I think of you, my child, and of all that might have been, and then of the bad end he has come to----”
”But I don't call it coming to a bad end, sir,” said Glory in a quivering voice.
”No? To be torn and buffeted and trampled down in the streets?”
”What of it? He might have died of old age in his bed and yet come to a worse end than that.”
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