Because now, what remained of his income must be devoted to Alixe.
Even before her case had taken the more hopeless turn, he had understood
that she could not remain at Clifton. Such cases were neither desired
nor treated there; he understood that. And so he had taken, for her, a
pretty little villa at Edgewater, with two trained nurses to care for
her, and a phaeton for her to drive.
And now she was installed there, properly cared for, surrounded by every
comfort, contented--except in the black and violent crises which still
swept her in recurrent storms--indeed, tranquil and happy; for through
the troubled glimmer of departing reason, her eyes were already opening
in the calm, unearthly dawn of second childhood.
Pain, sadness, the desolate awakening to dishonour had been forgotten;
to her, the dead now lived; to her, the living who had been children
with her were children again, and she a child among them. Outside of
that dead garden of the past, peopled by laughing phantoms of her youth,
but one single extraneous memory persisted--the memory of
Selwyn--curiously twisted and readjusted to the comprehension of a
child's mind--vague at times, at times wistfully elusive and
incoherent--but it remained always a memory, and always a happy one.
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