Certainly there are very few who,
standing where I stood, surrounded as I was by doubts, difficulties, and
dangers, would not have acted as I did.
And yet memory would rise up against me, and time upon time I would lie
awake at night, even by the side of Otomie, and remember and repent,
if a man may repent of that over which he has no control. For I was a
stranger in a strange land, and though my home was there and my children
were about me, the longing for my other home was yet with me, and I
could not put away the memory of that Lily whom I had lost. Her ring was
still upon my hand, but nothing else of her remained to me. I did not
know if she were married or single, living or dead. The gulf between us
widened with the widening years, but still the thought of her went
with me like my shadow; it shone across the stormy love of Otomie, I
remembered it even in my children's kiss. And worst of all I despised
myself for these regrets. Nay, if the worst can have a worse, there was
one here, for though she never spoke of it, I feared that Otomie had
read my mind.
Heart to heart, Though far apart,
so ran the writing upon Lily's betrothal ring, and so it was with me.
Far apart we were indeed, so far that no bridge that I might imagine
could join that distance, and yet I could not say that we had ceased
from being 'heart to heart.
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