“Or another woman,” said she.
I was very much taken aback.
“More than twenty years ago,” she said with a soft huskiness in her voice, and a tremor and a sweetness, as if she did not know that in twenty years all love stories are grown mouldy.
On my honour as a soldier this explanation of my early solicitude for Mary was one that had never struck me, but the more I pondered it now—. I raised her hand and touched it with my lips, as we whimsical old fellows do when some gracious girl makes us to hear the key in the lock of long ago. “Why, ma'am,” I said, “it is a pretty notion, and there may be something in it. Let us leave it at that.”
But there was still that accursed dedication, lying, you remember, beneath the blotting-pad. I had no longer any desire to crush her with it. I wished that she had succeeded in writing the book on which her longings had been so set.
“If only you had been less ambitious,” I said, much troubled that she should be disappointed in her heart's desire.
“I wanted all the dear delicious things,” she admitted contritely.
“It was unreasonable,” I said eagerly, appealing to her intellect. “Especially this last thing.”
“Yes,” she agreed frankly, “I know.” And then to my amazement she added triumphantly, “But I got it.”
I suppose my look admonished her, for she continued apologetically but still as if she really thought hers had been a romantic career, “I know I have not deserved it, but I got it.”