To have known a man but two brief, bright, happy days, and not be able to forget him, it was absurd, she thought, in desperate rebellion against her own heart.
And yet, through the busy weeks of travel, study, and acting, Harry Hawthorne's image staid in her mind, and his voice rang through her dreams, sweet and low and tender as it had always been to her whenever he spoke.
In her waking hours she knew him light and false; in her dreams he was always tender and true, and inexpressibly dear.
"Last night in my deep sleep I dreamed of you—
Again the old love woke in me and thrived
On looks of fire, on kisses, and sweet words
Like silver waters purling in a stream—
A dream—a dream!"
Through all the changing days in which the silent struggle against a hopeless love went on in her young heart, Clifford Standish was ever near, patient, tender, devoted, telling her with his yearning eyes the love she was not ready to listen to yet.
And in spite of herself, Geraldine found a subtle comfort in his devotion.
It was a balm of healing to her proud heart, so deeply wounded by Harry Hawthorne's trifling.
Many hearts have been caught in the rebound in this fashion, many true loves won.
True, there are many proud ones who do not prize a love they can only have because it has been scornfully refused by another.
They will say, resentfully: