"Is it ever too late for love?" she asked, and her hand touched gently the thin grey hair upon his temples.
"I have wasted my life, and yours," he answered drearily. "We might have been together all these years—all the long, long years—with our children round us—and now—it is nearly over. I am old, and dying, and you——"
"I am old too, my dear; perhaps it will not be long before—before——" her voice faltered and broke.
"Are you old?" he said; "your eyes are just what I remember, and your voice—it seems to me you are just the same as when I said good-bye to you under the lime-trees."
"Did you never get my other letter, John?" she said, after a moment or two. "I sent it to you ten years after you left me, because—because the silence was unbearable. Did you get it?"
"Yes, I got it; and I was busy—very, very busy. It brought me the scent of the garden, and the memory of you; and then—then I set it aside for a more convenient season, and it—ah, Joan!—it was filed for reference. Forgive me—Joan!"
Her caressing hand stroked his hair more tenderly, though her eyes filled with tears.
"We shall find it here," he said a little later, when Richard had deposited a great pile of letters beside him. "I was always methodical in my work—the letter will be here. Will you look for it?" His voice was so much weaker, that she looked at him with startled eyes, and the valet, returning, held a glass of cordial to his lips.
The two were alone again after that. Amongst the pile of old and faded letters the woman had found her own—the tiny girlish scrap, written impetuously, in a girl's impatient misery of long ago.
"Send me just one word," it ran—"only one word, to tell me that you have not forgotten."