Poor youth, she would come to the window if she were able, I am
sure, to sign that the one little unkindness is long forgotten,
to send you a reassuring smile till you and she meet again; and,
if you are not to meet again, still to send you a reassuring,
trembling smile.

Ah, no, that was for yesterday; it is too late now. He wanders
the streets thinking of her tonight, but she has forgotten him.
In her great hour the man is nothing to the woman; their love is
trivial now.

He and I were on opposite sides of the street, now become
familiar ground to both of us, and divers pictures rose before me
in which Mary A---- walked. Here was the morning after my only
entry into her house. The agent had promised me to have the
obnoxious notice-board removed, but I apprehended that as soon as
the letter announcing his intention reached her she would remove
it herself, and when I passed by in the morning there she was on
a chair and a foot-stool pounding lustily at it with a hammer.
When it fell she gave it such a vicious little kick.

There were the nights when her husband came out to watch for the
postman. I suppose he was awaiting some letter big with the fate
of a picture. He dogged the postman from door to door like an
assassin or a guardian angel; never had he the courage to ask if
there was a letter for him, but almost as it fell into the box he
had it out and tore it open, and then if the door closed
despairingly the woman who had been at the window all this time
pressed her hand to her heart. But if the news was good they