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 announced the date of our departure? Why did she suddenly seem flippant? The flippancy was a mask of course. Was it assumed to hide her chagrin at being found out, or to conceal her displeasure at John's impertinence? For indeed no milder term will suffice. Was she merely afraid that we should see how sorry she was that John was going? In other words, did she like him? If she did, was he her first choice, or had she a "past," as the saying is. How fervently I now hoped that the "past" existed only in our undisciplined imaginations. I could not bear that John should break his heart over the woman who wrote the "Sonnets of Constance." Yet she must have written them. Everything went to prove it. And then I thought of her clear eye and her healthy way of looking and talking, and I was more in a mix than ever.

Yes, nothing could be more futile than such speculations, and I finally made an end of them.