"I suppose that fascinated me. Then afterwards when Vincent took to those dreadful ways--whatever my feelings were, you _know_, Katherine, it was impossible." Katherine could bear it no longer, but she managed to control her voice in answering. "Why do you tell me these things? Do you suppose I care to hear about your 'feelings'?--if you do feel." "If I _do_ feel? Kathy!" "Well, why can't you keep quiet, now it's too late?" "Because--because I wanted you to know that I loved him." There was silence. Presently Audrey put one hand on Katherine's knee. "Kathy----" "I'd rather you didn't call me that, if you don't mind." "Why?" Audrey stared with large, incomprehensive eyes. "I can't tell you why." "Katherine, then--it _is_ prettier. Do you know, I sometimes think it's better, oh, infinitely better, that he should have died." Katherine rose from her seat, to end it, looking down on the kneeling figure, as she answered bitterly-- "It was indeed--infinitely better." But irony, like so many other things of the kind, was beyond Audrey. "I suppose I ought to go now," she said, rising. Katherine made no answer. Audrey went away to get ready, a little reluctantly, for she had so much more to say. It had never occurred to her to be jealous of Katherine. That may have been either because she did not know, or because she did not care. She had been so sure of Vincent. Presently she came back with her hat on. She carried her bearskins in her hand, and under the shade of the broad black beaver her face wore an expression of anxious thought. "Katherine,"--she held out her cape and muff, and Katherine remembered that they were those which Vincent had given her,--"I suppose I can wear my furs still, even if I _am_ in mourning?" There was neither scorn nor irony in the look that Katherine turned on her, and Audrey understood this time. As plainly as looks can speak, it condemned her as altogether lighter than vanity itself; and while condemning, it forgave her. "_He_ gave them to me, you know," she said at last. Audrey's pathos generally came too late. She drove away, wrapped in her furs, and for once unconscious of her own beauty, so dissatisfied was she with the part she had played in the great tragedy. Somehow her parts seemed always to dwindle this way in retrospect. That afternoon a parcel arrived, addressed to Hardy by his publishers. Katherine opened it. It contained early copies of the Pioneer-book, the book that after all Vincent was never to see. She saw with a pang her own design blazing in gold on the cover, and her frontispiece sketch of the author. Then she turned to the dedication page, and read-- TO HER WHO HAS INSPIRED ALL THAT THERE MAY BE OF GOOD IN IT THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY HER AFFECTIONATE COUSIN, VINCENT HARDY. It was an epitaph. CHAPTER XXVI