"For any one," she repeated. "I like it that way." Her eyes,
wandering a moment about the dim, bare office, rested on a calendar in
huge lettering hanging on the wall, rested on the figures of the date
of the day. "I want to be just a number, a date--August first--I'm
that, and that's all. I'll never see you again, I hope. But you are
good and I'll be grateful. Here's the way things are. Three years ago
I got engaged to a man. I suppose I thought I cared about him. I'm a
fool. I get--fads." A short, soft laugh cut the words. "I got about
that over the man. He fascinated me. I thought it was--more. So I
got engaged to him. He was a lot of things he oughtn't to be; my
people objected. Then, later, my father was ill--dying. He asked me
to break it off, and I did--he'd been father and mother both to me, you
see. But I still thought I cared. I hadn't seen the man much. My
father died, and then I heard about the man, that he had lost money and
been ill and that everybody was down on him; he drank, you know, and
got into trouble. So I just felt desperate; I felt it was my fault,
and that there was nobody to stand by him. I felt as if I could pull
him up and make his life over--pretty conceited of me, I expect--but I
felt that. So I wrote him a letter, six months ago, out of a blue sky,
and told him that if he wanted me still he could have me. And he did.
And then I went out to live with my uncle, and this man lives in that
town too, and I've seen him ever since, all the time. I know him now.
And--" Out of the dimness the clergyman felt, rather than saw, a smile
widen--child-like, sardonic--a curious, contagious smile, which
bewildered him, almost made him smile back. "You'll think me a pitiful
person," she went on, "and I am. But I--almost--hate him. I've
promised to marry him and I can't bear to have his fingers touch me."

In Geoffrey McBirney's short experience there had been nothing which