“You have done so,” she said with a smile, “by coming to see me. How good of you to remember—and, you know, by your not writing, I thought you had quite forgotten.”
“Forgive me, Yvonne—a kind of dull brutishness came over me—I couldn’t.”
“And I could n’t either, after the one I wrote—about my trouble—at Fulminster. You never answered it, and I thought—It was n’t because you despised me, was it?”
“I did n’t get the letter, Yvonne,” he said, unable to disregard this second reference as he had done the first. “It must have been the one I heard was lost. I will explain afterwards. I thought you were happy at Fulminster—so why should I inflict my eternal grumblings on you?”
“Then don’t you know what has happened?” asked Yvonne, with wider eyes and a little quiver of the lip.
“I learned it a few days ago. I went to Fulminster to find you, as my letters were returned to me through the Post Office. I was determined to discover you, but I never dreamed of finding you here. I came as soon I got the news this morning.”
“I have one friend left,” said Yvonne.
“And you shall always have him, if you will,” said Joyce. “You are the only one he has.”
“Poor fellow,” said Yvonne.
Though the sweet voice was broken and hard, there was the same tender pity in the words as when she had uttered them four years back, on their first re-meeting.