She did not sign her name, but she read his letter over again, and, seeing that he was lonely, and crabbed, and crusty, she added her address.
He answered to "Miss 'brown'" at the address she had given him, and he began his letter: "Dear wrong girl, write to me again." And she wrote back to say that indeed she would not dream of writing to him.
He replied thanking her, and asking if she were not the Miss Brown he had met on board ship sixteen years ago, who had been so kind and maternal to him, and had then had smallpox so badly. He hoped and believed she was that Miss Brown.
Nancy felt that she must tell him she was not that Miss Brown. And she did so. And there the correspondence ended. At least, so she told herself as she ran up the stairs after posting her letter at the corner of the street.
She was alone that evening, as so often. The piano-lamp was lit. The little china clock on the mantelpiece ticked time away like a hurrying heart, and Nancy suddenly realized that life was passing quickly, and that she was not living. She was shut up in the dusky little flat with Mr. Johnstone, and was as dead as he. A fierce excitement overcame her suddenly, like a gust of wind, like a flame of fire—regret for her wasted talents, resentment against her fate, hatred of the poverty that was crippling and maiming and crushing her. What was she doing? Was she asleep? was she drugged? was she dreaming? What had come over her that she could let herself drift down into the nameless obscurity, the sullen ignominy of despair?
When midnight struck, Nancy leaped from her chair as one who is called by a loud voice. Life was rushing past her; she would wake, and go too. Some old French verses came into her head about "la belle" who wanted to enter the "blue garden"; who passed it in the morning, and looked in through the open gates.
"La belle qui veut,
La belle qui n'ose,
Cueillir les roses
Du jardin bleu."
And she passed at noon, and looked in through the open gates:
"La belle qui veut,
La belle qui n'ose,
Cueillir les roses
Du jardin bleu."
In the evening she said: "Now I will enter." But she found that the gates were closed.