With tears running down her cheeks, she smiled. Then, sobbing and smiling still, she answered him:
“The key of the prison.”
Verplank nodded. He did not in the least understand. But the singularity of her appearance, joined to the singularity of her reply, aroused in him a great pity for this woman who had ruined her life, ruined his own, and who then seemed to him demented.
“Pardon, madame la comtesse. Monsieur Palencia and Monsieur Tyszkiewicz ask if madame la comtesse will receive them?”
At the door, behind her, was Emmanuel.
At once another phenomenon occurred. Galvanised by that instinct of form which, when requisite, enables women of the world to banish instantly any trace of emotion, Leilah turned to the footman a face in which the tears had been reabsorbed, and from which the smile had gone.
“Say to these gentlemen that I appreciate and thank them, but that I can see no one.”
Emmanuel compressed his lips. He wondered how she knew. There was a great deal occurring in this house that perplexed him. Moreover, Verplank’s bandage and sling interested him very much. But, trained to his calling, he bowed and withdrew.
“What do they want?” Verplank asked, memories of his own duel surging at mention of their names before him.
In Leilah’s face the tears and smiles reappearing, mingled.
“Barouffski is dead,” she answered.
Verplank closed and opened a hand. His mouth opened also. He was sure now that she was crazy.
“Dead! How? What do you mean?”
Leilah made a gesture.
“There, a moment ago, in the garden. D’Arcy shot him.”
Verplank started. The definiteness of her reply divested him of his idea concerning her, but it produced another which was also, though differently, disturbing. His eyes blazed. The old scar, the scar on the right side of his face, reddened.
“Who the devil is d’Arcy?”
For a moment he stared. Then, angrily snapping two fingers, he cried:
“In taking you from this damned house to-day, I had intended to leave a card for him, not a p. p. c. either, one with our address on it and the hours when I would be at home. If there was any shooting going on, I intended to be in it. Now some duffer must interfere.”
With a rapid intake of the breath, he considered her. At the moment, he doubted it could be true. Yet her face, with its hysterical blending of joy and sorrow, seemed to certify that it was so. After all, he reflected, however the odour may occur, always the smell of an enemy’s corpse is sweet. But, uncertain still, he threw out for clincher:
“Is that what you meant by the key of the prison?”
She moved to him.
“Gulian, yes, and never can I be thankful enough that it was not your hand that turned it.”
Verplank tossed his bandaged head.
“So this is the end!”
Leilah looked up at him.
“Gulian, no, not that. The end of the beginning, if you like. Hereafter we will be beginning anew. Hereafter – ”
She paused. The word had been evocative. Its repetition showed her that which she had not yet had time to consider; the decencies of life, the decencies, too, of death, the funeral, the widow’s weeds, the delay which the world exacts; new hostages to joy, real though impermanent.
She told him of them.
From the church next door the organ pealed, and as they then remade their plans – those plans which mortals think they make, and which always are unmade unless intended for them – a ray of sunshine entered; the organ pealed louder, the beauty of the melody hushed their voices, and for a moment, to the appoggiatura of Stradella, on that shaft of light, Leilah’s thoughts, ascending, mounted into realms where all things broken are made complete, and where are found again things vanished.
