Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/355

 "Do you often think of her—definitely?"

"Not more than I can help."

"Because you have to think of her with Bolton, when you do?"

"Yes."

"I know," said Alice, "how it was to have to think definitely of you at the hotel with her. I didn't do it, more than I could help. But all through it I kept on loving you. Of course you know that, so it is useless not to say it. Do you keep on loving her, David?"

"I loved her and I was happy with her—very, very happy for a while," he replied. "Now—she's not my wife, Alice. She was his wife before she was mine; she's his again. I forget her entirely a good deal of the time; then I think a lot about her, when she was my wife. I'd lie to you, if I denied that; I can't help remembering lots of things. I don't ever expect to forget them; I can't honestly say I want to. But I don't want her again; it's over between us—her and me."

"When was it over, David?"

He stopped walking and, when he did, she stopped and he stood looking down at her. They had passed from the squares which were built up with flats, they had passed a square of little houses and had come to some vacant lots fringed with brown, September trees. Few people had met them on the walk and no one at all was near, now.

He replied to her, after he had thought, "I don't know. You see, what she told me about her husband came all on the night I got back from Itanaca just after I heard about mother. The next day she went