Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/345

 "What a long way from Cypress Hill to being the wife of a French cabinet minister. We've both traveled a long way since we last met, Henry. A great deal has happened to both of us. On my side, I wouldn't change a thing. There are lives and lives, of course. Some like one sort and some another. I know you've been thinking what a lot I've missed by not marrying you." He moved as if to interrupt her. "Oh, I know you didn't say so openly. It's good of you to be so generous . . . to want me to have shared it." She cast down her eyes suddenly and her voice grew more gentle although it still carried that same devilish note of raillery. "I appreciate all that. . . . But I wouldn't have changed anything. I wouldn't have married you anyway."

Again the Governor coughed and looked out of the window.

"We all come to it sooner or later," he said. "It's a good thing to be married."

"Yes . . . a lonely old age isn't pleasant."

And here a deadlock arose once more in the conversation.

The crowd had begun to thin a little. Down the long vista of rooms it was possible now to distinguish a figure here and there in the throng. Outside the darkness had descended, veiling completely the white square. There was nothing now but the faint globes of light and the dim shooting rays of the passing motors.

The Governor turned suddenly and opened his mouth to speak. Then he closed it again sharply. It was clear that he had intended to say something and had lost his courage. He spoke at last, evading clearly what he had intended to say.

"Tell me . . . Where's Irene?"

"She's buried. . . . She's been buried these eleven years."

The Governor frowned.

"I'd no idea," he stammered. "I wouldn't have asked if I had known." He was sinking deeper in his confusion. There was something almost pitiful in his manrer, so empty now of pompousness, so devoid of complacency.

Lily smiled. "Oh, she's not dead. She's a nun. She's in the Carmelite convent at Lisieux . . . I meant that she was buried so far as life is concerned. She's lost to the world. She never leaves the convent, you know. It's part of her vow.