When they passed some place she remembered from her former rambles of the years before, she had a way of recalling it and saying: "It was here, John, we sat on the rock and you brought me water from the spring in a cup of leaves; let's do it again for old-time's sake. It was here, John, we seined the minnows; it was here you taught me the jack-knife dive; it was here you picked me up, oh, so tenderly! and with so much anxious solicitude, I have half a mind to fall again" until John grew timid, and the next time begged Mary to come with them, and when she said it was impossible, sought to keep with the other members of the party, but Rosamond was the better manager and their solitary rambles continued.
A day or two before she was to return home, as they sat resting on a moss-grown rock in a secluded cove far up the mountainside, she placed her hand over John's and said:
"Tell me, John, what you were going to ask the night of the dance so many years ago, when you brought me out to the arbor and we found Dorothy and Howard Bradford there?"
"I thought I loved you and was going to ask you to be my wife."
"Why didn't you, John—do; didn't you love me?"
"I had a horrid dream about you and before I recovered from it you became offended and returned home. I never saw you afterwards until Mary and I were married."
"So you let a dream shatter my dreams of love and happiness."
"You should not say that, Rosamond. You are married and to a man of your own choosing and I to the wife of my choice."
"Mine was a marriage of convenience; I did it believing that I could manage my husband and, with even the crude material at hand, make a man. I am regretting it even now after less than four months. He either has less sense than I thought or is harder to manage. I do not even respect him and if you were still single and wished it, I could get a divorce. Why did you not follow me home, John? That's what I expected you to do."
"Don't; such talk is not right and you must not say such things to me. Even though I loved you once, I now love only one woman in the world and that is Mary. Were we both single, I could not marry you unless Mary was married to some other man. There is no use talking about such things; they are a forgotten past. I shall not go out with you again; I dare not; you are a fascinating woman and the old love might return."