Thirty years had passed.
Thirty years that I had spent in vainly trying to overcome the love and hatred which consumed me. However occupied I was with the pressing affairs of my almost over-filled life I was conscious of an undercurrent of despair—the despair that I had felt when Eve told me she no longer loved me.
We were engaged.
Whether she really loved me, or whether it was only a girlish fancy I could not tell. But the day was set for our wedding and was not far off when one Sunday afternoon I went to her house for tea.
The mahogany table in the library was covered with fallen rose petals—the roses he had sent her. Although no other detail of the room has remained in my memory, I still can see the rose petals covering the polished surface. By some inexplicable phenomenon those pink petals were fixed forever in my mind.
I left that part of the country and eventually lost all trace of Eve.
Thirty years later I had a professional engagement with a client.
The man was ill with a cold and asked me to come to his house—