“I’ve heard of you at times,” she went on. “You’re quite a big lawyer out West—Denver, isn’t it, or Los Angeles? Marian must be very proud of you. You knew, I suppose, that I married six months after you did. You may have seen it in the papers. The flowers alone cost two thousand dollars.”
She had mentioned fifteen years. Fifteen years is a long time.
“Would it be too late,” I asked, somewhat timorously, “to offer you congratulations?”
“Not if you dare do it,” she answered, with such fine intrepidity that I was silent, and began to crease patterns on the cloth with my thumb nail.
“Tell me one thing,” she said, leaning toward me rather eagerly—“a thing I have wanted to know for many years—just from a woman’s curiosity, of course—have you ever dared since that night to touch, smell or look at white roses—at white roses wet with rain and dew?”
I took a sip of crème de menthe.
“It would be useless, I suppose,” I said, with a sigh, “for me to repeat that I have no recollection at all about these things. My memory is completely at fault. I need not say how much I regret it.”
The lady rested her arms upon the table, and again her eyes disdained my words and went traveling by their own route direct to my soul. She laughed softly, with a strange quality in the sound—it was a laugh of happiness—yes, and of content—and of misery. I tried to look away from her.
“You lie, Elwyn Bellford,” she breathed, blissfully. “Oh, I know you lie!”
I gazed dully into the ferns.