face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She looked in the fire, forgetting him.
“You want March,” he said—he worried endlessly over her—“to rip off your old leaves. I s’ll have to be March,” he laughed.
She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then broke out once more.
“You must start again—you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you’re not. Even if it’s a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are not dead.…”
Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze at a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a handsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as if yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the regular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight from his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded, cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. His look became distressed and helpless.
“You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,” he cried brutally. She shuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the fire. “You are not dead with Siegmund,” he persisted, “so you can’t say you live with him. You may live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead, and his memory is not he—himself.” He made a fierce gesture of impatience. “Siegmund now—he is not a memory—he is not your dead red leaves—he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because you are
