I
put it back upon its shelf, and sat racking my brains trying to
recollect. We had met somewhere--in the country--a long time ago,
and had talked of common-place things. To the vision of her clung
the scent of roses and the murmuring voices of haymakers. Why had
I never seen her again? Why had she passed so completely out of my
mind?
My landlady entered to lay my supper, and I questioned her assuming
a careless tone. Reason with or laugh at myself as I would, this
shadowy memory was becoming a romance to me. It was as though I
were talking of some loved, dead friend, even to speak of whom to
commonplace people was a sacrilege. I did not want the woman to
question me in return.
"Oh, yes," answered my landlady. Ladies had often lodged with her.
Sometimes people stayed the whole summer, wandering about the woods
and fells, but to her thinking the great hills were lonesome. Some
of her lodgers had been young ladies, but she could not remember
any of them having impressed her with their beauty. But then it
was said women were never a judge of other women. They had come
and gone. Few had ever returned, and fresh faces drove out the
old.
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