“Please do not be troubled—you have done no harm. Herr Kaufmann and I are practically strangers.”
“That is so,” replied the Doctor, evidently reassured; “and I did not mean it. It is not the same thing as if I had done it purposely.”
“Not at all the same thing.”
At times, we put something aside in memory to be meditated upon later. The mind registers the exact words, the train of circumstances that caused their utterance, all the swift interplay of opposing thought, and, for the time being, forgets. Hours afterward, in solitude, it is recalled; studied from every point of view, searched, analysed, questioned, until it is made to yield up its hidden meaning. It was thus that Margaret put away those four words: “He loves her still.”
They are pathetic, these tiny treasure-houses of Memory, where oftentimes the jewel, so jealously guarded, by the clear light of introspection is seen to be only paste. One seizes hungrily at the impulse that caused the hiding, thinking that there must be some certain worth behind the deception. But afterward, painfully sure, one locks the door of the treasure-chamber in self-pity, and steals away, as from a casket that enshrines the dead.
They talked of other things, and at half-past ten the Doctor went home, leaving a farewell message for Lynn, and begging that his kind remembrances be sent to Iris, when she should write.
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Irving. “I shall surely tell her, and she will be glad.”
The door closed, and almost immediately Lynn came in from the library, rubbing his eyes. “I think I’ve been asleep,” he said.
“It was rude, dear,” returned Margaret, in gentle rebuke. “It is ill-bred to leave a guest.”
“I suppose it is, but I did not intend to be gone so long.”