"When I got your message," he continued in the low, modulated voice that rang in her ears searchingly, "I believe I expected to see you again just as you had gone away. It brought back our days together, with such a rush; it made me realize that you had not forgotten, either. You see, Natalia, even in politics, everything is not entirely blotted out."
She drew her hand slowly away from him, clasping them both tight in her lap.
"And yet you threw away your chance, to come to me!"
"Don't you remember my promise to come to you? I said no matter where I was, I would come to you when you needed me. Do you think I should have deserved to win if I had done otherwise?"
"I had released you from that promise—by not keeping mine," she answered with unsteady voice.
"You were only a little girl then, Natalia—of course you did not know what you were promising. Besides, we were both children, and children forget quickly."
She looked at him, curiously. Could it be true that she was mistaken?
"You did not forget," she murmured.
"How could I forget what you had been to me! Those were long, long days to me, Natalia, and without you, I don't know how I should have gotten through them. You made them beautiful and happy for me, for in your confidence and dependence, I was brought out of my brooding upon those I had left behind me. You and Judge Houston were the only ones to whom I could tell my real yearnings, and even as a child, I felt you understood and sympathized. It was hard on me when you went away; only in endless work did I find any consolation. Ah, how I did work, Natalia! People say things come easy to me, but that is because when others begin to study a case my nights of ceaseless labour have been finished. But in the late afternoons, my thoughts always drifted back to you; and when this dear old place was closed, and your little brothers and their mother went away, I would come out here often and sit, right where you are now, and wonder where you were and if you would ever come back to me again."
Natalia leaned back on the bench with a gradual lessening of all forces. Sargent's influence, the calm tones of his voice, the old charm of his presence, crept over her with a quieting effect that left her wholly contented. She had no other wish now than to hear him talking to her.