At last (of course) he did.
“Don’t forget to save something for Miss Amy!” he said, and disappeared again into his cubicle.
While Rosaleen went about her solitary work, washed the dishes, scoured the pots, boiled the dishtowels and hung them to dry, swept the floor, and at last could put out the gas and go away, leaving her domain in perfect order. Nothing more to be done....
Then was the time when the pain, the unhappiness which she had thought to be conquered, and lost in resignation, came back to her again, stronger, more bitter than ever. In all her hard life there had never been anything so hard as the renunciation of this unknown young man.
“But I won’t go to meet him!” she said. “He’d be sure to find out. And then it would be all the worse.... Now I’ve only seen him once, and if I never see him again, I’ll soon forget him. Oh, much, much better not to go!”
“But if he liked me very much, he wouldn’t care who I was!”
That thought, however, held no consolation. He would care. She knew it. She had read in every feature of his face the most obstinate and tyrannical pride.
“But maybe he’d never find out?” she persisted, desperately.
And looked and looked in the mirror, with fervent anxiety. One might have thought she expected to see her secret stamped on her brow.