CHAPTER V
FULFILMENT
An hour had passed. As the afternoon sun sank lower the shadow blot beneath the big maple had lengthened and deepened. In consequence the annoying light-rift was no more. Overhead the leaves were vibrating, barely vibrating, with the first breath of breeze of evening born. Otherwise there was no change; just the big red roadster and the man and the girl idling beside.
“Poverty, work, subservience,” conversation had drifted where it would, at last had temporarily halted, with the calendar rolled back twenty years; “poverty, work, subservience,” the man had paused there to laugh, the odd, repressed laugh that added an emphasis no mere words could express. “Yes; they’re old friends of mine, very old friends, very. I’m not likely to forget the contrast they’ve made, ever, no matter what the future holds.”
“You’ve not forgotten, then, what’s past,—overlooked 242 it? Isn’t it better to forget, sometimes,—some things?”
“Forget?” The man was looking straight up into space. “I wish I could forget, wish it from the bottom of my soul. It makes me—hard at times, and I don’t want to be hard. But I can’t ever. Memory is branded in too deeply.”
The girl was picking a blade of grass to pieces, bit by bit.
“I’m disappointed. I fancied you could do anything you wished,” she said low. “That’s what has made me afraid of you sometimes.”