I asked him about the plays
now on at the leading theatres--he had not seen them; about the new
prima donna--he had not heard her. Finally I broke a long silence by
picking up a book from the table at my side. "Worth reading?" I asked,
nibbling at it here and there. (It was a novel, with "Thirty-fifth
thousand" in larger letters than the title on the top of its yellow
cover.) As I spoke, a peculiar name, the name of a character on the leaf
I was just turning, brought suddenly to my mind one of the few women I
had known who bore it.
"By the way, Callender," I said animatedly, striking down the page that
had recalled her with my finger, "What has become of your little
blue-stocking friend? Don't you know--her book was just out when I
sailed,--'On Mount Latmos,'--'On Latmos Top,'--what was it?"
A dark flush burnt its way up to the black, straight hair.
"She is--dead," Callender replied, with a hopeless pause before the
hopeless word.
"Dead!" I echoed, unable to associate the idea of death with the
incarnation of life that I remembered.
Callender did not reply. He rose, with the slight limp so familiar to me
in the past, but which I noticed now as if I had never seen it before,
and went to a desk at the far end of the spacious room. I smoked on
meditatively. It was odd, I thought, that chance had guided me straight
as an arrow, to the cause of the change in my friend.
Pages:
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106