And nevertheless, Le Mesurier received no notification from Lily; no news of any sort, no rumour touching Shergold's fate was ever carried to Le Tas. The strangeness of such a silence could only confirm him in the belief that Shergold had spoken to no one of his intended journey to Saint Maclou, and he again told himself he was absolutely safe. He turned to dismiss the subject from his mind.
But he found to his astonishment that he could not dismiss it, that it had become a fixed idea, an obsession, which overpowered his will, He was as impotent to chase Shergold from his waking thoughts as from his troubled nightly dreams. If he looked up suddenly to the window, it was because he fancied he had seen Shergold's head passing rapidly by; if he caught himself listening intently in the stillness, he knew a moment later that it was because he fancied Shergold had spoken, and that the vibrations of his voice still shook the air. It was a horrible disappointment to learn that instead of ridding himself of Shergold, as he had hoped, he seemed to have bound himself up with him inseparably for ever. While he had been alive, Le Mesurier, once out of his presence, had often forgotten him for days at a time; now that he was dead, Le Mesurier could think of nothing else.
But a more curious development was, that as time went by, he noticed that his old, hearty, satisfying hatred for the man was fading away. Does not absence always weaken hatred? And when you realise the absence to be eternal, to be the immutable absence of death, is not hatred extinguished? Love is stronger than death, for love is positive, affirmative. But hatred? Hatred is negative; hatred is a manifestation of the transitory Nay, not of the everlasting Yea. Is it possible to hate the dead?
