With a rapid intake of the breath, he considered her. At the moment, he doubted it could be true. Yet her face, with its hysterical blending of joy and sorrow, seemed to certify that it was so. After all, he reflected, however the odour may occur, always the smell of an enemy’s corpse is sweet. But, uncertain still, he threw out for clincher:
“Is that what you meant by the key of the prison?”
She moved to him.
“Gulian, yes, and never can I be thankful enough that it was not your hand that turned it.”
Verplank tossed his bandaged head.
“So this is the end!”
Leilah looked up at him.
“Gulian, no, not that. The end of the beginning, if you like. Hereafter we will be beginning anew. Hereafter—”
She paused. The word had been evocative. Its repetition showed her that which she had not yet had time to consider; the decencies of life, the decencies, too, of death, the funeral, the widow’s weeds, the delay which the world exacts; new hostages to joy, real though impermanent.
She told him of them.
From the church next door the organ pealed, and as they then remade their plans—those plans which mortals think they make, and which always are unmade unless intended for them—a ray of sunshine entered; the organ pealed louder, the beauty of the melody hushed their voices, and for a moment, to the appoggiatura of Stradella, on that shaft of light, Leilah’s thoughts, ascending, mounted into realms where all things broken are made complete, and where are found again things vanished.
Colophon
The Monster
was published in 1912 by
Edgar Saltus.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Bob Reus,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2014 by
Donald Cummings, Bryan Ness, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Portrait of Mrs. E. Gadolin-Lagervall,
a painting completed in 1901 by
Magnus Enckell.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
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Uncopyright
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