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Updated: June 24, 2025
Oke was speaking slowly, almost to herself, and I had never, I think, seen her look so strange and so beautiful, the stiff white dress bringing out but the more the exotic exquisiteness and incorporealness of her person. I did not know what to answer, so I said half in jest "I fear you have been reading too much Buddhist literature, Mrs. Oke. There is something dreadfully esoteric in all you say."
Except the theatrical cousin, who burst into a loud laugh, none of the company had ever heard Lovelock's name, and, doubtless imagining him to be some natural appanage of the Oke family, groom or farmer, said nothing, so the subject dropped. From that evening onwards things began to assume a different aspect. That incident was the beginning of a perfect system a system of what?
I told neither of my resolution, but prepared sketch after sketch of Mrs. Oke, while continuing to paint her husband. Mrs. Oke was a silent person, more silent even than her husband, for she did not feel bound, as he did, to attempt to entertain a guest or to show any interest in him.
"What is that costume?" asked the theatrical cousin, who, after a second, had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Oke was merely a woman of marvellous talent whom he must try and secure for his amateur troop next season.
"Have you any ghosts at Okehurst, by the way?" I asked. The place seemed as if it required some to complete it. "I hope not," answered Oke gravely. His gravity made me smile. "Why, would you dislike it if there were?" I asked. "If there are such things as ghosts," he replied, "I don't think they should be taken lightly. God would not permit them to be, except as a warning or a punishment."
A man is surely not responsible if the people with whom he is forced to deal, and whom he deals with as with all the rest of the world, are quite different from all other human creatures. So, if indeed I did at all conduce to mischief, I really cannot blame myself. I had met in Mrs. Oke an almost unique subject for a portrait-painter of my particular sort, and a most singular, bizarre personality.
The room, compared with the out door, was rather dark; but against the yellow wall I saw Mrs. Oke sitting alone on a couch in her white dress, her head slightly thrown back, a large red rose in her hand. "Do you believe now?" whispered Oke's voice hot at my ear. "Do you believe now? Was it all my fancy? But I will have him this time. I have locked the door inside, and, by God! he shan't escape."
Oke took the miniature religiously off its stand, and showed me, written in faded characters upon the back, the name "Christopher Lovelock," and the date 1626. "I found this in the secret drawer of that cabinet, together with the heap of poems," she said, taking the miniature out of my hand. I was silent for a minute. "Does does Mr. Oke know that you have got it here?"
Oke something quite different; it seemed distant, intangible, not of this earth, like her smile and the look in her eyes. "Such love as that," she said, looking into the far distance of the oak-dotted park-land, "is very rare, but it can exist. It becomes a person's whole existence, his whole soul; and it can survive the death, not merely of the beloved, but of the lover.
Oke was standing in the middle of the room, with a faint smoke about him; and at his feet, sunk down from the sofa, with her blond head resting on its seat, lay Mrs. Oke, a pool of red forming in her white dress. Her mouth was convulsed, as if in that automatic shriek, but her wide-open white eyes seemed to smile vaguely and distantly. I know nothing of time.
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