“What shall I do with them?” he said, taking them in his hand and thinking how much they were like Helen, beautiful but frail, for they were already beginning to droop. “I can’t keep them in my room, and I can’t throw them from the window to be found and commented upon. I’ll burn them, as I have the letters.”
Drawing his chair to the stove, he kindled a fire with some light wood there was in a box, and, when it was well started, he burned the roses one by one, feeling a kind of satisfaction as he saw them blacken and turn to ashes. There was still the little white and gold book of poems, and over this he hesitated. He was so fond of Browning that it seemed sacrilege to burn up Sordello and Pauline. They were intimately connected with Helen, who had professed to like them so much. But her liking was all pretence, and leaf after leaf went into the stove, until the whole was consumed. There was nothing now but the rings, and these he would return. With the burning of the roses and book, Craig felt a good deal better, and, quite to his surprise, slept so soundly that he did not waken until Jeff knocked twice on his door and told him it was after eight o’clock.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CLOSE OF THE SEASON.
Early on Monday morning Mrs. Tracy began her preparations for leaving the Prospect House. Helen’s wardrobe was to be packed as well as her own, and, although Celine did her best, it was impossible to get off on the noon train.
“’Pears to me I’d wait till I was feelin’ better. You look pretty white and pimpin’,” Uncle Zach said to her.
Mrs. Tracy answered curtly that nothing could induce her to stay another day in Ridgefield, where she had suffered so much. She wished she had never come there, she said, and conducted herself as if somebody in the house was to blame for her trouble. Just who it was she didn’t know, but finally decided that it was Craig! If he had been more demonstrative it would never have happened, and she believed he did not care very much now that it had happened. It irritated her to see him appear so natural when he came to call upon her after his breakfast was over. There was a tired, heavy look in his eyes, and his face was pale, but otherwise he was the same dignified, faultlessly attired young man, speaking in his usual manner, and even laughing at something Jeff said when he brought one of her trunks into the room. If he had seemed downcast and sorry, and his cuffs and collar and necktie and dress generally had shown some neglect, and he had spoken low and not laughed, she would have liked it better. She did not guess the effort he was making in order that no one should suspect how deeply he had been wounded. He was very polite to her, and when she took the evening train for New York he went with her to the station, and attended to her wants as carefully as if she had really been his mother-in-law in prospect.
“Did you read Helen’s letter?” she asked, as they were waiting for the train.
“Yes,” he replied; “I read it and burned it.”
“Shall you answer it?” was her next question, put at random, as she wished to draw some expression from him.
“Certainly not. Why should I? That page in both our lives is turned,” he said, while she looked curiously at him.