Rosalie shook and sobbed.

“I hate—­death,” she said.  “Oh, Jim Crow, why did God let my poor Peer die?” She was completely unstrung.  “Death is so—­ugly.”

I said, “It is not ugly.  Peer will live again—­like the daffodils in the spring.”

“Do you believe that, Jim Crow?”

I did believe it, and I told her so—­that even now her Peer was strong and well; and I think it comforted her.  It gave her lover back to her, as it were, in the glory of his youth.

She did not wear mourning, or, rather, she wore mourning which was like that worn by no other woman.  Her robes were of purple.  She kept Perry’s picture on the table, and out of the frame his young eyes laughed at us, so that gradually the vision of that ravaged figure in the west room faded.

I went to see her once a week.  It seemed the only thing to do.  She was utterly alone, with no family but the great-aunt and uncle who had been with her when she met Perry.  She was a child in business matters, and Perry had left it to me to administer the affairs of his little estate.  Rosalie had her small bungalow, Perry’s insurance, and she turned her knowledge of painting to practical account.  She made rather special things in lamp-shades and screens, and was well paid for them.

I went, as I have said, once a week.  A woman friend shared part of her house, but was apt to be out, and so I saw Rosalie usually alone.  I lived now at the club and kept a car.  Rosalie often dined with me, but I rarely ate at the bungalow.  Now and then in the afternoon she made me a cup of tea, rather more, I am sure, for the picturesque service with her treasured Sheffield than for any desire to contribute to my own cheer or comfort.

And so, gradually, I grew into her life and she grew into mine.  I was forty-five, she twenty-five.  In the back of my mind was always a sense of the enormity of her offense against Perry.  In my hottest moments I said to myself that she had sacrificed his life to her selfishness; she might have been a Borgia or a Medici.

Yet when I was with her my resentment faded; one could as little hold rancor against a child.

Thus the months passed, and it was in the autumn, I remember, that a conversation occurred which opened new vistas.  She had been showing me a parchment lamp-shade which she had painted.  There was a peacock with a spreading tail, and as she held the shade over the lamp the light shone through and turned every feathered eye into a glittering jewel.  Rosalie wore one of her purple robes, and I can see her now as I shut my eyes, as glowing and gorgeous as some of those unrivaled masterpieces in the Pitti Palace.

“Jim Crow,” she said, “I shall do a parrot next—­all red and blue, with white rings round his eyes.”

“You will never do anything better than that peacock.”

“Shan’t I?” She left the shade over the lamp and sat down.  “Do you think I shall paint peacocks and parrots for the rest of my life, Jim Crow?”