V
Despite every effort that was made to discover her, Rosy remained undiscovered. At the end of a week I made my arrangements and crossed over to London, where I felt sure I should ultimately have news of her. I had been informed by a chief of the Parisian police that either she had got off by the very train which I had intended to take, or else she was dead. I felt a strong conviction that neither had she got off by that train (how was it possible?), nor yet was she dead; but at times a horrible idea came over me that she might be being detained in some infamous den. This the chief of police had confidently assured me was not so: I had, myself, wandered about filthy back-streets enough in the forlorn hope of finding her: had at last, thinking of Marina, visited infamous dens enough, places of hot air and bright light and tawdrily-rich ornament, filled with fat and ghastly painted naked women who had at first almost terrified me, thinking of that awful breathless picture of Juvenal's Agrippina, and then made me sorrowful past tears. And, here in this London, where my own poor mother had offered her body for sale in the public way, what a thought was it to think, that perhaps I had not persevered enough in that search; that perhaps if I had stayed another week, another day, I might have found her! I could do no work. As day followed day, and still no news either from Parisian or London police, I became so feverish at nights that I could not sleep. And I knew then in my dread and anguish and horrible reproachful longing, how dear she was to me—how inexpressibly dear—dearer than anything, my darling of love!
At last, one evening about a fortnight after she had left me, sitting in my easy-chair in the study window, trying to read a book, I began to think about the little canary (up there now, the little pet, asleep in his cage), singing snatches of song, while the sun was on our feet, and, realising once more that all this was not done in a dream, but that she was indeed gone from me, might at this moment be in misery, might die
