Chapter IX

So it seems that there are times when a man may raise up a graven image and worship it, and yet receive an answer to his prayer. For Anne did not die.

At dawn they took him up into that unfamiliar room of hers, and led him carefully to her bed so he would not strike against it, and after a time they left him there. He hardly left it for weeks.

He spent hours, they said, locating the little things in the room, so that whatever she wanted he could get it quickly for her. Before they let her up, he had practised the movement from the bed to the chair where she was to sit, so that when the time came he lifted her and deposited her with one movement.

I am not trying to prove that he had changed fundamentally. He has never done that. A good many people, by and large, detest him, and others only tolerate him for his genius. For genius it is, of course. He still blusters and bellows, he still boasts when he is happy and sulks when he is hurt.

I have heard him enter the house at Saint Cloud—they are back there now—and call Anne at the top of an angry and imperious voice. And I have seen her come, as quietly as ever, and as ready to serve him.

But I have seen something of Anne in everything worth while that he has done since. And whether he makes love to her or not, every new bit of work he does is a love song to her, imperishable in marble or in bronze.

He will always be faithful to her, in his fashion.