Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/218

206 had been qualified by her quick escape, so that there grew up in him an absurd desire to put it to some better test. Save in so far as some other improbable accident might assist him, such a test could be only to meet her afresh at church. Left to himself he would have gone to church the very next afternoon, just for the curiosity of seeing if he should find her there. But he was not left to himself, a fact he discovered quite at the last, after he had virtually made up his mind to go. The influence that kept him away really revealed to him how little to himself his Dead ever left him. They reminded him that he went only for them—for nothing else in the world.

The force of this reminder kept him away ten days; he hated to connect the place with any thing but his offices, or to give a glimpse of the curiosity that had been on the point of moving him. It was absurd to weave a tangle about a matter so simple as a custom of devotion that might so easily have been daily or hourly; yet the tangle got itself woven. He was sorry, he was disappointed; it was as if a long, happy spell had been broken and he had lost a familiar security. At the last, however, he asked himself if he was to stay away forever from the fear of this muddle about motives. After an interval, neither longer nor shorter than usual, he re-entered the church with a clear conviction that he should scarcely heed the presence or the absence of the lady of the concert. This indifference didn't prevent his