Her love would come back to her only in bitter memories, in painful thoughts that would shame and burn. All else beside, she had been Austen Ware's promised wife. How could she still feel love for the man who had caused his death? Yet—if she must—if she could never tear that image from her breast!
Like the reflection of a camera-obscura, memory painted a sudden picture on the void; she saw herself sitting amid the branches of a tulip-tree, while some one sang—a song the wind was humming in the cordage:
"Forgotten you? Well, if forgetting
Be yearning with all my heart,
With a longing, half pain and half rapture,
For the time when we never shall part;
If the wild wish to see you and hear you,
To be held in your arms again—
If this be forgetting, you're right, dear,
And I have forgotten you then."
Great, slow tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
CHAPTER XLVIII
WHILE THE CITY SLEPT
Daunt accompanied his chief that evening to a dinner at the Nobles' Club—a "stag," for conventional functions had been discontinued since the royal death had cast a pall over the stay of the Squadron. As they drove thither a nearer shadow was over the Ambassador's spirits. His thoughts would stray to Barbara and her misfortune, which seemed so deep and irreparable. He had eventually accepted his wife's diagnosis as to Daunt's tendresse, but he had a confidence that his Secretary of Embassy, though hard-hit, would bear no scars. He could not guess all that lay beneath the brave domino Daunt was wearing.