" Beloved! She leaned far forward,
dropping it with deft precision into the glowing pocket of embers.
What next? This was more like--it began "Dear Captain Langdon" in
the small, contained, even writing that was her pride, and it went
on soberly enough, "I shall be glad to have tea with you next
Friday--not Thursday, because I must be at the hut then. It was
stupid of me to have forgotten you--next time I will try to do better."
Well, she had done better the next time. She had not forgotten him
again--never, never again. That had been her first letter; how
absurd of Jerry, the magnificently careless, to have treasured it
all that time, the miserable, stilted little thing! She touched it
with curious fingers. Surely, surely he must have cared, to have
cared so much for that!
It seemed incredible that she hadn't remembered him at once when he
came into the hut that second time. Of course she had only seen him
for a moment and six months had passed--but he was so absurdly vivid,
every inch of him, from the top of his shining, dark head to the
heels of his shining, dark boots--and there were a great many inches!
How could she have forgotten, even for a minute, those eyes dancing
like blue fire in the brown young face, the swift, disarming charm
of his smile, and, above all, his voice--how, in the name of
absurdity could any one who had once heard it ever forget Jeremy
Langdon's voice? Even now she had only to close her eyes, and it
rang out again, with its clipped, British accent and its caressing
magic, as un-English as any Provincial troubadour's! And yet she had
forgotten--he had had to speak twice before she had even lifted her
head.
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