In my house at
Ledbury. You saw her recognize me." He was standing on his feet,
looking down at me. I don't know what I looked like. At any rate,
he gave a sort of gurgle and then stuttered:
"Oh, I say. . . ." Those were the last words I ever heard of Mr
Bagshawe's. A long time afterwards I pulled myself out of the
lounge and went up to Florence's room. She had not locked the
door--for the first time of our married life. She was lying, quite
respectably arranged, unlike Mrs Maidan, on her bed. She had a
little phial that rightly should have contained nitrate of amyl, in
her right hand. That was on the 4th of August, 1913.
PART III
I
THE odd thing is that what sticks out in my recollection of the rest
of that evening was Leonora's saying:
"Of course you might marry her," and, when I asked whom, she
answered:
"The girl."
Now that is to me a very amazing thing--amazing for the light of
possibilities that it casts into the human heart. For I had never had
the slightest conscious idea of marrying the girl; I never had the
slightest idea even of caring for her. I must have talked in an odd
way, as people do who are recovering from an anaesthetic.
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