She lay in the silence of the night and the darkness until, oppressed, she put on the light by her bed and saw snowflakes piling on the sill of an open window and blowing softly upon the blue carpet of the floor. Getting up, she closed the window and brushed the snow into the brass fire shovel and thence upon the dead gray logs where the fire had died. She was about to get into bed, shivering with cold, when she heard footsteps pacing down the hall. She listened, wondering, and then put on her blue velvet dressing gown and opened her door. Edmond Hartley was at the head of the stairs about to descend, fully dressed, when he saw her.
“I am sleepless,” he said, “and I was about to go in search of a book I saw in the library today.”
“Shall I come to your help?” she asked.
“My dear lady, you are very kind.”
“In a minute,” she said, and returned to her mirror to brush her hair and pin it back, and touch her face with powder, her lips with color. Vanity, she told herself, but vain she was, even when she was alone. And leaving the room, she found him waiting at the head of the stair without the slightest sign of noticing that the blue of her robe matched the blue of her eyes, or that she was, in fact, quite beautiful. With an air of almost tolerant patience be allowed her to precede him down the stairs and into the library, where expertly he coaxed the dying coals in the fireplace into flames again, while she lit one lamp after another until the whole room glowed, the books on their shelves, the great bowl of flowers on the long mahogany table, the ruby red in the pattern of the Oriental rugs, the polished floor.
“Why are you sleepless?” she asked, seating herself by the fire.
He was searching a bookshelf now, his back to her.
“I am not a good sleeper at best,” he replied absently, “and in a strange house — ah, here’s the book I was looking for, a rare edition of Mallarme.”
“It belonged to my father,” she said.
“But he was a scientist—”
She broke in, “He was everything.”
“Ah, like Jared.”
He sat down in a large armchair opposite her and opened the book. Then, not looking at her, he went on, “I’ve been the worst possible person to bring up a lively brilliant boy. I haven’t dared to let myself love him — fearing myself, lest I love him too much — a poisonous love.”
“Can love be poisonous?” she asked.
He darted a strange sidewise look at her and closed the book. “Ah, yes, indeed it can. I learned that very early. I might say I was — conditioned to it when I was very young — by an older man.”
His lips seemed suddenly dry, and he ran his tongue over them. “I never thought I could ever tell that to anyone. But I want you to — to — know why I have never allowed Jared — to come close to me.”
He lifted his somber eyes and in them she saw a desperate pleading to be understood.
“I understand,” she said gently. “I do understand. And I think it most noble of you to — to use such restraint, such control, such reverence for true love. I respect you very much.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. I–I don’t know if I have ever been spoken to like that before. But I have never wanted to do anything — or seem to do anything — that would warp the — the meaning of love for Jared. It was better, I thought, to let him grow up without any expression of the love I truly feel for him rather than shape a false image of love. The image of love is so easily warped — misshaped — perverted somehow, so that never again does it appear what it is, the only reason for living, the only refuge, the only source of energy and soul’s growth. The very power of love — the most powerful force in life — makes love produce, when it is warped, or perverted, or even misplaced, the greatest suffering in life.”
He spoke so sincerely, so deeply, that she saw him anew, a man of profound and agonized feeling, and she was silent before him.
“Teach him, my dear,” he urged. “Teach him what love is. Only a woman can do that — a woman like you.”
“I will try,” she said.
…“I want you to come to New York and see how the hand is working,” Jared said over the telephone.
She was at her desk in the library one fine spring morning, the rhododendrons outside the window already showing shades of rose and magenta as she could see. The forsythias at the far end of the lawn were in their final golden bloom, their dying brilliance gleaming against the darkness of the flanking evergreens.
“And why must I come to New York?” she asked. “You know I don’t love that city.”
“I know, but it’s really wonderful to see how the hand is working, so well that the man is going home shortly. Besides, it will give you a reason to see my people.”
She knew by now, of course, that when he said “my people,” he meant the people who needed the instruments he designed to take the place of the hands and feet, the eyes, hearts, kidneys they might lose or had lost. She had scarcely seen him in the months since he and his uncle had spent the New Year with her, but his long telephone calls, made usually at midnight, and of late his short, dramatic letters, had kept him close to her. And she? It seemed that she had done nothing except play the grand piano in the music, room, attend a few committee meetings and dinners and concerts, and wait until he called or wrote. She no longer hid from herself the fact that he absorbed her entire inner life and thought, so that whatever she did was of no real importance in comparison with the necessity of being there in the house when he called. Let him find her always there, ready for his every need! When he wrote, she sent her immediate, answering letter, and in this communication, at once remote and intimate, they began to use endearments that might have lit a flame had they been in each other’s presence. Upon a page, in black ink, even the words “my dearest” remained cool.
“This is Tuesday,” he was saying. “Can you make it tomorrow? Then we will have dinner together — maybe dance somewhere? We’ve never done that. Odd, I never thought of it. There’s always so much to talk about when I am with you. About three? I’ll meet you at the rehabilitation center — you have the address.”
“Tomorrow at three,” she promised.
And how absurd, she thought, five minutes later, the call ended, that she was already thinking of what she should wear! She decided on a pale gray suit with a matching coat, very thin and gracefully cut and fitting her beautifully, with hat, shoes and bag of the same silvery shade, and this gray a foil for her apple-green jade jewelry which Arnold had bought for her in Hong Kong on their last journey around the world. Thus arrayed, she left the house the next day after luncheon, the chauffeur smart in a new black uniform. Though she was accustomed to the luxuries of her life, she felt today a peculiar happiness, as though she were young again, as though she were going to meet the lover she had never had. She put from her mind every small annoyance of her life and drifted away into a mood of total happiness. For hours she would be with Jared, whom now she knew she loved as she had never loved anyone before, so that she felt herself changed and glorified by love. Do what she might, how could she hide from him the truth? But why indeed must truth be hidden?
…“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jared demanded proudly.
They stood in a large rectangular room, bare of decoration but bright with the afternoon sun streaming through the uncurtained windows. Around the wails were narrow hospital beds, each occupied by men with varied amputations. There was not a whole man among them, she saw as she glanced about her. Only Jared was perfect, cruelly perfect, she thought, and it was to the credit of those pallid men, lying or sitting, that there was no hatred on their drawn faces.