The way was clear yet. There was nothing
irretrievable, nothing irrevocable, which would for ever stain the memory
and tarnish the gold of life when the perfect love should be minted.
Whatever faults of mind or disposition or character were his--or
hers--there were no sins against the pledges they had made, nor the bond
into which they had entered. Life would need no sponge. Memory might
still live on without a wound or a cowl of shame.
It was all part of the music to which she listened, and she was almost
oblivious of the brilliant throng, the crowded boxes, or of the Duchess
of Snowdon sitting near her strangely still, now and again scanning the
beautiful face beside her with a reflective look. The Duchess loved the
girl--she was but a girl, after all--as she had never loved any of her
sex; it had come to be the last real interest of her life. To her eyes,
dimmed with much seeing, blurred by a garish kaleidoscope of fashionable
life, there had come a look which was like the ghost of a look she had,
how many decades ago.
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