“Yes; I bought the locket right after we were engaged and the picture had been there until I took it out that night in St. Louis.”
“Tell me more about how you came to take it out,” she asked with the insistence of a child demanding the continuation of a story. “Didn’t it have any kind of meaning for you any more,—not even little associations—memories—you wouldn’t lose?”
“No; it was as though something had died in me and utterly ceased to be. I was wondering about a lot of things that night. After I had written to you I wrote a letter to Mrs. Trenton. She had said from time to time that if I ever found myself interested in another woman not to be afraid to tell her. I don’t know how seriously she meant that. Odd as it may seem, I don’t know Mrs. Trenton! I used to think I did but that was sheer conceit on my part. As long as she had made that suggestion—about telling her if I met a woman who really appealed to me more than she did—I thought I’d tell her about you. Oh, I didn’t tell your name nor where you live!” he exclaimed seeing the look of consternation on Grace’s face. “My agreement with her was half a joke; in later years I’ve never quite known when to take her seriously. I suppose I wrote her more to feel her out as to whether she might not have reached the point where it would be a good thing to quit altogether.”
“Well,” Grace asked, “what did she say?”
“Oh, so far her only answer has been a magnificent silence! The philosophers agree, don’t they, that a woman doesn’t always mean what she says? But a silence is even more baffling. What would you say about it?”
“A little ominous—perhaps——”
“Contempt, disdain, indifference? Maybe she’s just awaiting further advices, as we say in business.”
“Possibly she never got the letter.”
“That’s conceivable; she’s a fast traveler; the mails have hard work to catch up with her.”
“You don’t really know whether she got the letter or what she would have written if she received it. Maybe she’s just waiting for a chance to talk to you about it.”