“What about him?” said the other, and she laughed very loudly.
“Well, it’s like this,” Deborah replied. “Two years ago I fell desperately in love with a young man, but it was one-sided. Naturally, the next time I met him he didn’t know me.”
“But the strange part about it is that he should remember me,” persisted Minnie.
“Well, you see,” laughed Deborah, “I expect all the time I was in love with him he was in love with you,” and she walked away.
But that night, when the silence bell rang, she hid her face in the solitary pillow.
“I’d have forgiven him if he’d forgotten her too; but to remember her after two years, and to forget me after four months, it’s too bad—it’s too bad,” and she lay awake for a long time, too miserable to cry, too restless to sleep.
“Besides, he never knew her except the little bit I told him about her, and that never interested him. He tells lies—so now!”
However, it’s no use dwelling on these things; but Providence was kind enough to let her see him once more, in just about as tantalising a way.
And something had said, “Go and speak to him;” and something else had said, “Come away.”
And she went away, feeling more like a wild cat than a woman.