Janet ... why, actually, Janet was a stranger, he didn't know Janet
any more! She was nothing but a frail phantom of recollection: the
years had erased her! But this girl--warm, alluring, immediate....
No--no! It couldn't be.
So much will the force of an idea do for a man, you see. Because, of
course, it could have been. He had only to destroy the letter that
lay there before him, to wait on until the next sailing, to make
continued love to Vanessa, and never to go to Tawnleytown again.
There was little probability that Janet would come here for him. Ten
years and ten thousand miles ... despite all that he had vowed on
Bald Knob that Sunday so long ago, wouldn't you have said that was
barrier enough?
Why, so should I! But it wasn't.
For Harber took the letter and put it in a fresh envelope, and in
the morning he went aboard the steamer without seeing the girl again ...
unless that bit of white standing near the top of the slope, as the
ship churned the green harbour water heading out to sea, were she,
waving.
But he kept the address she had written.
Why? He never could use it. Well, perhaps he didn't want to forget
too soon, though it hurt him to remember. How many of us, after all,
have some little memory like that, some intimate communion with
romance, which we don't tell, but cling to? And perhaps the memory
is better than the reality would have been.
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