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 looked upon it as her personal record of the past and sometimes he wished that she would want him to read it; sometimes he felt more content not to know. For she had cut herself off from her past prior to her appearance in Evanston, with a completeness which became more and more disquieting to David as the years went on.

She wrote regularly to, and as regularly heard from, Mr. Jessop in the bank at White Falls; occasionally, in the large envelopes which contained her income checks and the periodical statements of the condition of her affairs, there seemed to be other enclosures but nothing to indicate even a haphazard correspondence with friends. She never mentioned to David anybody whom she had known before, except Mr. and Mrs. Jessop, her aunt Minna and Bolton, and of him, David knew no more than he had learned three years ago. Fidelia had loved him once and had had a dangerous adventure with him; then she had sent him away; he was dead.

David wondered often upon what days in the year the events with Bolton had occurred; he wondered what anniversaries ran in Fidelia's mind, as there ran in his the yearly return of May second, the day upon which Alice and he had become engaged. Then there was Alice's birthday, which was October tenth. The approach of that day still set him planning; he felt himself vaguely avoiding engagements on October tenth and, when the day came, he felt queerly guilty.

The occasions of his father's visits, though they were not made upon fixed dates, also had the effects of summoning Alice to David's mind. For he had had