Meanwhile no sign of it had reached him since the day he left her. Julia could give him no news of her; she believed, but was not certain, that Freda was away. When he called in Montagu Street he was told that Miss Farrar had given up her rooms and gone abroad.
He wrote to the address given him, and heard from her by return. She told him that she was very well; that San Remo was very beautiful; that she was sure he would be glad to hear that a small income had been left to her, enough to relieve her from the necessity of writing—she had not, in fact, written a line in the last year—otherwise, of course, he would have heard from her. "It rather looks," she added, "as if poverty had been my inspiration."
In every word he read her desire to spare him.
It had not stayed with her, then? The slender flame had died in her, the sudden spirit had fled. Well, if it had to go, it was better that it should go this way, all at once, rather than that they should have had to acknowledge any falling-off from the delicate perfection of her gift.
Three months later a letter from his friend, Mrs. Dysart, informed him of Freda\'s death at San Remo early in the spring.
Mrs. Dysart had seen her there. She was now staying with her niece, Julia Nethersole, and desired to see him. She was sure that he would want to hear about their friend.
He remembered Mrs. Dysart as a small, robust, iron-gray woman—sharp-tongued, warm-hearted, terrifically observant. Though childless, she had always [Pg 52] struck him as almost savagely maternal. He dreaded the interview, for he had had some vague idea that she had not appreciated Freda. Besides, his connection with Miss Farrar was so public that Mrs. Dysart would have no delicacy in approaching it.
Mrs. Dysart proved more reticent than he had feared. The full flow of her reminiscences began only under pressure.
The news of Miss Farrar\'s death, she said, came to her as a shock, but hardly as a surprise.
"You were not with her, then?" he said.
"No one was with her."
The words dropped into a terrible silence. A sound broke it, the sound of some uneasy movement made by Julia.
"When did you see her last?" he asked.
"I saw her last driving on the sea front at San Remo. If you could call it seeing her. She was all huddled up in furs and rugs and things. Just a sharp white slip of a face and two eyes gazing at nothing out of the carriage window. She looked as if something had scared her."
And it was of her that he had been afraid!
"Do you know," he said presently, "what she died of?"
"No. It was supposed that, some time or other, she must have had some great shock."
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