om, but twenty
years younger--the same bone-structure with its unscarred youth upon
it, only a lesser beard with a sunnier tinge, but all the thickness of
the hair. She could remember the voices in the house, the farewells to
the young man who was just starting for India, and how she slipped
down to say a last good-bye on her own account, and felt grateful to
that old Dean Ireson (the only time in her life) for begging her
mother (who, of course, was the Rosalind Nightingale Fenwick spoke of
in the train) on no account to expose herself to the night-air. Why,
she might have come down, too, into the garden, and spoiled it all!
And then she could remember--oh, how well!--their last words in the
windy garden, and the horse in the dog-cart, fresh from his stall,
and officiously anxious to catch the train--as good as saying so, with
flings and stamps. And how little she cared if the groom _did_ hear
him call her Rosey, for that was his name for her.

"Now, Gerry, remember, I've made you _no_ promises; but I'll play
fair. If I change my mind, I'll write and tell you. And you may write
to me."

"Every day?"

"Silly boy, be reasonable! Once a month! You'll see, you'll get tired
of it."

"Come, Rosey, I say! The idea!"

"Yes, you will! Now go! You'll lose the train."

"Oh, Rosey dearest!"

"Yes, what?--you'll lose the train."

"Oh, my dearest, I _can't_! Just think--I may never see you again!"

"You _must_ go, Gerry dear! And there's that blockhead of a boy
outside there."

"Never mind him; he's nobody! Only one more.... Yes, _dearest love_,
I'm really going.... Good-bye! good-bye! God bless you!"

And then how she stood there with the memory of his lips dying on
hers, alone by the gate, in the wild wind, and heard the sharp regular
trot of the horse lessen on the hard road and die away, and then the
running of a train she thought was his, and how he would surely miss
it, and have to come back. And it _would_ be nice just to see him
again! But he was gone, for all that, and he was a dear good boy. And
she recollected going to her bedroom to do up her hair, which had all
come down, and hiding her face on her pillow in a big burst of tears.

Her mind harked back on all this as he himself, the same but changed,
stood there in the moonlight striving to recollect it all, and
mysteriously failing. But at least, he _did_ fail, and that was
something. But oh, what a wrench it gave to life, thought, reason,
to all her he