Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) by Thomas Hardy

the station and find out the exact time the train arrives,’ said Springrove, rather eagerly, when they had landed.
    She thanked him much.
    ‘Perhaps we might walk together,’ he suggested hesitatingly. She looked as if she did not quite know, and he settled the question by showing the way.
    They found, on arriving there, that on the first day of that month the particular train selected for Graye’s return had ceased to stop at Anglebury station.
    ‘I am very sorry I misled him,’ said Springrove.
    ‘O, I am not alarmed at all,’ replied Cytherea.
    ‘Well, it’s sure to be all right — he will sleep there, and come by the first in the morning. But what will you do, alone?’
    ‘I am quite easy on that point; the landlady is very friendly. I must go indoors now. Good-night, Mr. Springrove.’
    ‘Let me go round to your door with you?’ he pleaded.
    ‘No, thank you; we live close by.’
    He looked at her as a waiter looks at the change he brings back. But she was inexorable.
    ‘Don’t — forget me,’ he murmured. She did not answer.
    ‘Let me see you sometimes,’ he said.
    ‘Perhaps you never will again — I am going away,’ she replied in lingering tones; and turning into Cross Street, ran indoors and upstairs.
    The sudden withdrawal of what was superfluous at first, is often felt as an essential loss. It was felt now with regard to the maiden. More, too, after a meeting so pleasant and so enkindling, she had seemed to imply that they would never come together again.
    The young man softly followed her, stood opposite the house and watched her come into the upper room with the light. Presently his gaze was cut short by her approaching the window and pulling down the blind — Edward dwelling upon her vanishing figure with a hopeless sense of loss akin to that which Adam is said by logicians to have felt when he first saw the sun set, and thought, in his inexperience, that it would return no more.
    He waited till her shadow had twice crossed the window, when, finding the charming outline was not to be expected again, he left the street, crossed the harbour-bridge, and entered his own solitary chamber on the other side, vaguely thinking as he went (for undefined reasons),
       ‘One hope is too like despair
       For prudence to smother.’
     

III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS
     
    1. FROM THE TWENTY-SECOND TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF JULY
     
    But things are not what they seem. A responsive love for Edward Springrove had made its appearance in Cytherea’s bosom with all the fascinating attributes of a first experience, not succeeding to or displacing other emotions, as in older hearts, but taking up entirely new ground; as when gazing just after sunset at the pale blue sky we see a star come into existence where nothing was before.
    His parting words, ‘Don’t forget me,’ she repeated to herself a hundred times, and though she thought their import was probably commonplace, she could not help toying with them, — looking at them from all points, and investing them with meanings of love and faithfulness, — ostensibly entertaining such meanings only as fables wherewith to pass the time, yet in her heart admitting, for detached instants, a possibility of their deeper truth. And thus, for hours after he had left her, her reason flirted with her fancy as a kitten will sport with a dove, pleasantly and smoothly through easy attitudes, but disclosing its cruel and unyielding nature at crises.
    To turn now to the more material media through which this story moves, it so happened that the very next morning brought round a circumstance which, slight in itself, took up a relevant and important position between the past and the future of the persons herein concerned.
    At breakfast time, just as Cytherea had again seen the postman pass without bringing her an answer to the advertisement, as she had fully expected he would do, Owen entered the room.
    ‘Well,’ he said, kissing her, ‘you have not been alarmed, of