“Oh, if you like, that you have learned who the purchaser of St. Johnswort is, and that you know he will not give way.”
“Well!” she said, with a quick sigh, as of disappointment. After an indefinite pause, she asked, “Shall you be going to St. Johnswort?”
“Why, I don’t know,” Hewson answered. “I had thought of going to Europe. But, yes, I think I shall go to St. Johnswort, first, at any rate. One can’t simply turn one’s back on a piece of real estate in that way,” he said, recognizing a fact that would doubtless have presented itself in due order for his consideration. “My one notion was to forget it as quickly as possible.”
“I should not think you would want to do that,” said the girl, seriously.
“No, one oughtn’t to neglect an investment.”
“I don’t mean that. But if such a thing had happened to me, there, I should want to go again and again.”
“You mean the apparition? Did I tell you how I had always had the expectation that I should see it again, and perhaps understand it? But when I had behaved so shabbily about it, I began to feel that it would not come again.”
“If I were in your place,” said the girl, “I should never give up; I should spend my whole life trying to find out what it meant.”
“Ah!” he sighed. “I wish you could put yourself in my place.”
“I wish I could,” she returned, intensely.