"On the contrary," said Laura, "he will complete me. He hates everyone I hate—the living, that is. The dead he treats with appropriate respect. Last Tuesday we went to a funeral together for a woman neither of us had heard of, and he held my hand through the entire service. It was more romantic than Venice."
"Enemy," said the young man. "The general ruined my father. Drove him to bankruptcy and an early grave. I came to make sure he was really dead."
"You are morbid," he said.
She rather liked coincidences.
"You are not Shelley. You are a woman of thirty-four who collects mourning clothes like other women collect butterflies. This man will ruin you." laura by saki pdf
And if a certain lean, dark young man happened to be standing near the yew tree, well—that would be a coincidence.
But then, quietly at first, a change crept in. "On the contrary," said Laura, "he will complete me
That afternoon, she attended the general's funeral. It was a splendid affair, with a military band playing something suitably somber and a clergyman whose voice trembled with a professional sorrow that Laura found deeply soothing. She stood near a yew tree, pretending to dab her eyes with a handkerchief that smelled of lavender, and studied the other mourners.
Dear Laura, it read. You were right. Hatred is more reliable than love. I have spent these last weeks trying to love the world, and I find it insufferably tedious. The living are, as you once said, terribly particular. They expect gratitude, reciprocity, and other exhausting performances. I miss you. I miss our funerals. I miss the way you used to rank the sandwiches afterwards. Will you not reconsider? Last Tuesday we went to a funeral together
"Watch me," said Laura. The divorce was swift, scandalous, and deeply satisfying to Egbert, who attended the proceedings with a small bag of peppermints and an expression of vindicated gloom. Laura cited "fundamental incompatibility of temperament," which was technically true. Julian did not contest. He had, he told the judge, "come to believe in the possibility of redemption," which Laura noted down for future use as evidence of insanity.
Julian smiled—a gentle, infuriating smile. "You cannot divorce me for loving you."