I don't know whether they would have sold for
three thousand pounds--I admit it was a draft on posterity that
posterity might have dishonoured--but I thought they might possibly go
a little way towards paying my debt."
"Your debt? I don't understand." But the trembling of her mouth belied
its words.
"Don't you? Don't you remember?"
"No, I don't. I never _have_ remembered."
"Probably not. But you can hardly suppose that I've forgotten it."
"What has it to do with you, or me--or this?"
"Not much, perhaps; but still something, you'll admit."
"I admit nothing. I can't bear your ever having thought of it. I wish
you hadn't told me. It spoils everything."
"Does it? Such a little thing? Surely a friend might be allowed to
leave you a small legacy when he was decently dead? And it wasn't
_his_ fault, was it, if it paid a debt as well?"
The tears rose in her eyes to answer him.
"But you see I didn't leave it. I didn't wait for that. I was afraid
that my being dead would put you in a more embarrassing position than
if I'd been alive. You might have hated those poems and yet you might
have shrunk from suppressing them for fear of wounding the immortal
vanity of a blessed spirit. Or you might have taken that horrid
literary view I implored you not to take. You might have hesitated to
inflict so great a loss on the literature of your country." He tried
to speak lightly, as if it were merely a whimsical and extravagant
notion that he should be reckoned among the poets.
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