and sister occasionally romanced about the possibility of his
recovering and marrying her after all--they had an enormous opinion
of the artistic virtue of forgiveness--but it was not a contingency
ever seriously contemplated by Miss Anderson herself. Her
affection, pricked on by remorse, had long satisfied itself with the
duties of her ministry. If she would not leave him until he died,
it was because there was no one but herself to brighten the long day
in the prison hospital for him, because she had thrown him into the
arms of the woman who had deserted him, because he represented in
her fancy her life's only budding towards the sun. Her patience
lasted through six years, which was four years longer than any
doctor had given Frederick Prendergast to live; but when one last
morning she found an empty bed, and learned that Number 1596 had
been discharged in his coffin, she rose from the shock with the
sense of a task fully performed and a well-developed desire to see
what else there might be in the world.

She announced her intention of travelling for a year or two with a
maid, and her family expressed the usual acquiescence. It would
help her, they said, to 'shake it off'; but they said that to one
another. They were not aware--and it would have spoiled an ideal
for them if they had been--that she had shaken it off, quite
completely, into Prendergast's grave.

This was the curious reason why Miss Anderson's travels were so long
postponed.



Chapter 3.II.