The absurdity of such an outcome of malicious gossip, struck her with a pathetic desire to laugh.
“After all these years! At my age,” she murmured.
She thought of her three years of happiness, the little space of time which had opened like a flower in her grey life, and wondered pitifully why any one should grudge it to her. But most of all, she shrank from the thought that people should talk about it. It had been for so many years her secret possession, the memory that had sweetened all her later days.
It would be insupportable to know that her acquaintances were gossiping about her. About her and René.
A painful flush rose to her face as she sat down again by the fire.
After her talk with Madge Dakin, her old life seemed too near. She thought of the parting with René in the morning—the morning he left her for his three days’ work at Fontainebleau.
The agony of making that parting a light one! She remembered that he turned at the door, and came back to kiss her again. The sun was on his hair, as he crossed the room.
Involuntarily to-night, twenty years after the words were spoken, Anne put her hands over her ears, that she might not hear his voice. But she knew what he had said. She remembered how, when he was gone, her resolution wavered.
Without question he loved her still. Wasn’t it too soon? Might she not stay a little longer? Just a little while longer? And then the bonne had brought the letters of the second post, and among them there was one for René in a handwriting she knew. Within the past month they had been coming very often, these letters. Lately, every day.
She remembered how the sunshine had streamed upon the envelope at which she sat staring, till at last she moved to make her preparations.