CHAPTER XVIII — FLORENCE
The morning brought sunshine and the sound of sleigh-bells. In the wonderfully clear air of New York, the snow-covered streets dazzled the eyes. Never did a town look more brilliant, or people feel more blithe, than on this fine day after the long snow-storm.
“Isn't it glorious?” Edna Hill was looking out on the shining white gardens from Florence's parlor window. “Certainly, on a day like this, it doesn't seem natural for one to cling to the past. It's a day for beginning over again, if ever there are such days.” Her words had allusion to the subject on which the two girls had talked late into the night. Edna had waited for Florence to resume the theme in the morning, but the latter had not done so yet, although breakfast was now over. Perhaps it was her father's presence that had deterred her. The incident of the meal had been the arrival of a note from Mr. Bagley to Mr. Kenby, expressing the former's regret that he should be unavoidably prevented from keeping the engagement to go sleighing. As Florence had forgotten to give her father Mr. Bagley's verbal message, this note had brought her in for a quantity of paternal complaint sufficient for the venting of the ill-humor due to his having stayed up too late, and taken too much champagne the night before. But now Mr. Kenby had gone out, wrapped up and overshod, to try the effect of fresh air on his headache, and of shop-windows and pretty women on his spirits. Florence, however, had still held off from the all-important topic, until Edna was driven to introduce it herself.
“It's never a day for abandoning what has been dear to one,” replied Florence.
“But you wouldn't be abandoning him. After all, he really is the same man.”
“But I can't make myself regard him as the same. And he doesn't regard himself so.”
“But in that case the other man has vanished. It's precisely as if he were dead. No, it's even worse, for there isn't as much trace of him as there would be of a man that had died. What's the use of being faithful to such an utterly non-existent person? Why, there isn't even a grave, to put flowers on;—or an unknown mound in a distant country, for the imagination to cling to. There's just nothing to be constant to.”
“There are memories.”
“Well, they'll remain. Does a widow lose her memories of number one when she becomes Mrs. Number Two?”