Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/355

 It was a brief paragraph, not more than three or four lines. It recounted the death of one Stepan Krylenko, a man well known as a leader in international labor circles. He died, according to the despatch, of typhus in Moscow whither he had been deported by the American government.

(Perhaps, after all, the Uhlan was right. The Monster would devour them all in the end.)

After a time Lily rose and went out of the pavilion into the garden where she walked slowly up and down for a long time, seating herself at last on the bench under the laburnum tree.

Inside the house the wild merriment persisted. Ellen was singing now in a rich contralto voice a valse which she played with an exaggerated sweep of sentimentality. From the peak of her hard and cynical intelligence, she mocked the song. She sang,

In a wild burst of mocking laughter, the song came abruptly to an end. The shattered chords floated out into the garden where Lily sat leaning against the laburnum tree, silent and thoughtful, her eyes filled with sorrow and wonder. She was in that moment more beautiful than she had ever been before. . . a symbol of that which is above all else eternal, which knows no bonds, which survives cities and mills and even nations, which is in itself the beginning and end of all things, without which the world itself must fail.

And presently, far down among the plane trees, the gate in the high wall swung gently open and, against the distant lights of the Rue de Passy, the figure of the white haired M. de Cyon came into the garden.