"I imagined as much, my dear; but you were so hampered by your noun of epicene gender, that I thought it best to be rid of it."
Maida blushed. "Oh, Miss Rolph! What will you think of me?--of my fitness as a pioneer in Woman's cause?"
"Think, my dear? That you are a woman like the rest of us. This was a feature in your nature that seemed missing. The absence of a universal weakness does not necessarily argue strength. It may arise from insensibility, and merely show an incomplete nature. I think better of you, perhaps. Go on."
"I had known him long ago. My first situation, when I began to teach, was in his uncle's house. He was a student at Harvard, but spent his vacations at home with us. His cousins were mere children; his uncle and aunt had their own affairs; I was his sole companion. He taught me much. It was a happy time. We were both young, fresh and hopeful, and--well---- He is the only young man I ever saw much of. He expected to make his fortune right away, and we---- But I cannot speak of it....
"That was ten years ago. We corresponded--for the first year or so. After that we lost sight of one another. I came to Montpelier; he--was making his fortune. He recognised me on the platform at Narwhal Junction. I was so pleased to find that he remembered me. He asked if I was married, and he told me that he was not. He went back with me to Clam Beach--or so I thought. Perhaps I ought to put it the other way, and say that it was I who went with him; but at any rate we went together, and we were together there all the time. He knew nobody but myself, and he did not care to make acquaintances, it seemed; and he stayed on, though at first he had spoken of leaving in two days. And so it appeared to me--is there not some excuse for me, Miss Rolph?--that we were taking up our intimacy just where we had laid it down before."
"Ah!" said Miss Rolph. The bird-like look of the philosophic investigator had left her features now, and she was listening with genuine interest. She had still a heart, away down deep below her theories and professional fads, and there was perennial interest for her in a kindness between man and woman; which may have been unworthy of her position, but was as salt to preserve her nature sound and wholesome.
"What is his name, my dear? One follows a story so much better for knowing the names."
"Roe--Gilbert Roe. Has it not a pleasant sound?"
Miss Rolph's eyelids quivered in a momentary start. Then she looked down into her lap, compressing her lips, and making as if she would show no sign till all was told.
"He stayed on more than a week. He is there now, I daresay. He was with me constantly--sat beside me at table. People said it was a sure case, and congratulated me; and I--well--what else could I think? I believed them. Looking back now, with my insight cleared by what came after, I am bound to own that he said nothing in all that time. When I tried to hark back to the community of feeling that had subsisted between us long ago, he disregarded and passed it by. I am not accusing him of behaving badly, remember. It is my own foolish credulity alone which I have to blame; and oh, Miss Rolph, what humiliation it has brought on me! It hunted me away home here. I dared not, for shame, go back to Clam Beach, even to bring away my things."