His back was to the
river and he pointed westward.
"I have been in a country where one forgets," he answered. "I
think that I have thrown the knapsack of my follies away. I
think that it is buried. There are some things which I do not
forget, but they are scarcely to be spoken of."
"You are a strange young man," she said. "Was I wrong, or were
you not once in love with me?"
"I was terribly in love with you," Tavernake confessed.
"Yet you tore up my cheque and flung yourself away when you found
out that my standard of morals was not quite what you had
expected," she murmured. "Haven't you got over that quixoticism
a little, Leonard?"
He drew a deep sigh.
"I am thankful to say," he declared, earnestly, "that I have not
got over it, that, if anything, my prejudices are stronger than
ever."
She sat for a moment quite still, and her face had become hard
and expressionless. She was looking past him, past the line of
lights, out into the blue darkness.
"Somehow," she said, softly, "I always prayed that you might
remember. You were the one true thing I had ever met, you were
in earnest. It is past, then?"
"It is past," Tavernake answered, bravely.
The music of a Hungarian waltz came floating down to them. She
half closed her eyes. Her head moved slowly with the melody.
Tavernake looked away.
"Will you come and see me just once?" she asked, suddenly. "I am
staying at the Delvedere, in Forty-Second Street.
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