“That day at the train. Agnes had sent me a kodak picture of Keith and yourself taken on a fishing trip and I recognized you instantly. I had a little prejudice against you to start with, Agnes praised you so preposterously, and then when I saw you looking so bored and superior—oh, I know it was immodest and unwomanly and perfectly horrid, but I just had an intuition of the way you’d gone through life holding women at arm’s length, and I made up my mind to give you something to think about.”
The confession ended in a half sob. A tear clung for an instant to her curving lashes then fell to her cheek. Forbes leaned closer, murmuring something neither an assurance of forgiveness nor altogether entreaty, but a mixture of both. If it was further food for thought for which he pleaded, he did not ask in vain.
HOPE
By Edward Thomas Noonan
“Here’s a pathetic case of chronic melancholia,” the doctor continued, as we walked among the inmates. “That white-haired woman has been here twenty-six years. She is entirely tractable with one obsession. Every Sunday she writes this letter:
“‘Sunday.
“‘Dear John:
“‘I am sorry we quarreled when you were going away out West. It was all my fault. I hope you will forgive and write.
“‘Your loving,
“‘Esther.’