"We were talking and planning naturally enough. Royal was coming and going in the two rooms; I had plenty of chance to--to escape. Every time I let one go by my heart beat harder."
He could tell from her voice that her heart was beating hard now with the memory of that old time.
"If I had let them all go by," she recommenced, "my life would have been different. In a few weeks we would have come back to Watertown, as man and wife, and perhaps had a studio near the Streets', and perhaps found a solution. But I couldn't!
"I caught up my coat; left my hat and bag. I went down the stairs, not daring to wait for the elevator. And I went to Mrs. Harrington's. She was very kind and took me in; she said that perhaps it would be better to wait--until I was older. I cried all night, and the next day Mrs. Harrington lent me the money and I went back to Linda.
"Of course, it was terrible, at first. But they were kind to me, in their way. And I was--cured. I went into hysterics at the first mention of the whole hideous thing. They saw Roy, and they told me that I need never see him again. The papers--for it got to the papers!--said that a divorce had been arranged, but there was no need for a divorce. It was all hushed up--Linda and Fred never spoke of it. I--ah, well, I couldn't!
"But when Fred's brother, David, who was in dental college then, began to like me, then they began to make light of it," Harriet remembered. "There had been no marriage, of course, either in law or in fact. They all knew that. And I suppose if I had married David it might have been happier for me. But as it was, I angered them. I didn't want to marry David. And so it was what folly girls got themselves into--what the world thought of a girl who had been 'talked about'--what the least breath of scandal meant!"
"And you went back to Blondin?" Richard suggested.
"I? No, I never saw him again until a year ago in this garden!" Harriet said.
"You never saw him again!" the man ejaculated.
"Not for nine years!"