John Burleson came to see him, and cried. After he left, Querida said to Valerie: "John and I are destined to remain near neighbours; his grief is well meant, but a trifle premature." "You are not going to die, José!" she said gently. But he only smiled. Ogilvy came, Annan came, the Countess Hélène, and even Mrs. Hind-Willet. He inspected them all with his shadowy and mysterious smile, answered them gently deep in his sunken eyes a sombre amusement seemed to dwell. But there was in it no bitterness. Then Neville came. Valerie and Rita were absent that day but their roses filled the private ward-room with a hint of the coming summer. Querida lay looking at Neville, the half smile resting on his pallid face like a slight shadow that faintly waxed and waned with every breath he drew. "Well," he said quietly, "you are the man I wished to see." "Querida," he said, deeply affected, "this thing isn't going to be permanent--" "No; not permanent. It won't last, Neville. Nothing does last.... unless you can tell me whether my pictures are going to endure. Are they? I know that you will be as honest with me as I was--dishonest with you. I will believe what you say. Is my work destined to be permanent?" "Don't you know it is?" "I thought so.... But _you_ know. Because, Neville, you are the man who is coming into what was mine, and what will be your own;--and you are coming into more than that, Neville, more than I ever could have attained. Now answer me; will my work live?" "Always," said Neville simply. Querida smiled: "The rest doesn't matter then.... Even Valerie doesn't matter.... But you may hand me one of her roses.... No, a bud, if you don't mind--unopened." When it was time for Neville to go Querida's smile had faded and the pink rose-bud lay wilted in his fingers. "It is just as well, Neville," he said. "I couldn't have endured your advent. Somebody _has_ to be first; I was--as long as I lived.... It is curious how acquiescent a man's mind becomes--when he's like this. I never believed it possible that a man really could die without regret, without some shadow of a desire to live. Yet it is that way, Neville.... But a man must lie dying before he can understand it." * * * * * A highly tinted uncle from Oporto arrived in New York just in time to see Querida alive. He brought with him a parrot. "Send it to Mrs. Hind-Willet," whispered Querida with stiffening lips; "_uno lavanta la caça y otro la nata_." A few minutes later he died, and his highly coloured uncle from Oporto sent the bird to Mrs. Hind-Willet and made the thriftiest arrangement possible to transport what was mortal of a great artist to Oporto--where a certain kind of parrot comes from. CHAPTER XVI On the morning of the first day of June Neville came into his studio and found there a letter from Valerie: "DEAREST: I am not keeping my word to you; I am asking you for more time; and I know you will grant it.