Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/366

 "Kay! Kay dear, what is it?"

Kay looked at her blankly.

"My things," she said slowly. "He's sent me my things. It's all over."

Later on they got her into her bedroom, Nora and Bessie, and into her bed. She was very cold, and Nora filled hotwater bags and put them around her, while Bessie noticed again how thin she was; that the coverings were hardly raised over her body. Still later on Bessie and Nora unpacked the box.

"Well, whatever would you make of that? It's a candle!"

"It must have got in by mistake."

But the tragic poverty-stricken contents of the box appalled Bessie. That, and Kay's reception of them.

She sat thinking after Nora had gone. What a tragedy it was that the only thing age could offer to youth was its own experience, and that the experiences of others were never profitable. Not that her own! She brushed that aside.

The thing was to find out if McNair still cared. If Nora was right, probably he did. This other girl had been an episode. Men often were unfaithful to women they adored; a man's passion and his love could be two entirely different matters; only women never believed that, because with them passion was only a further development of love.

Sitting there, the sunlight lighting up her short yellow hair—slightly darker at the roots—Bessie gave herself up to the unusual indulgence of thought. There had been Ronald; dying alone in a hospital. She had never cared for Ronald; he had been one of those who kept his passions and his love far apart. But she was sorry he had died alone.

She had made the best she could out of life, but lately it had grown a trifle stale and unprofitable. What was the use of pretending to youth, when it was gone. Gone forever. There was a little Russian now; he admired her, because he said she must have looked, in her youth, very like a lady he had once loved!

"A lady of the circus; she was very beautiful. But my people"