Jane, like every other woman in the village, had bought her copy of The Purple Fan. She read it surreptitiously, keeping it concealed, when not in use, beneath a cushion on the Chesterfield. It was not its general tone that caused her to do this, but rather the subconscious feeling that she, a good wife, ought not to be deriving quite so much enjoyment from the work of a man who had occupied for a time such a romantic place in her life.
For Jane, unlike myself, adored the book. Eulalie French, its heroine, whose appeal I had so missed, seemed to her the most fascinating creature she had ever encountered.
She had read the thing through six times when, going up to town one day to do some shopping, she ran into Rodney Spelvin. They found themselves standing side by side on the pavement, waiting for the traffic to pass.
“Rodney!” gasped Jane.
It was a difficult moment for Rodney Spelvin. Five years had passed since he had last seen Jane, and in those five years so many delightful creatures had made a fuss of him that the memory of the girl to whom he had once been engaged for a few weeks had become a little blurred. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he had forgotten Jane altogether. The fact that she had addressed him by his first name seemed to argue that they must have met at some time somewhere; but, though he strained his brain, absolutely nothing stirred.
The situation was one that might have embarrassed another man, but Rodney Spelvin was a quick thinker. He saw at a glance that Jane was an extremely pretty girl, and it was his guiding rule in life never to let anything like that get past him. So he clasped her hand warmly, allowed an expression of amazed delight to sweep over his face, and gazed tensely into her eyes.
“You!” he murmured, playing it safe. “You, little one!”
Jane stood five feet seven in her stockings and had a forearm like the village blacksmith’s, but she liked being called “little one.”
“How strange that we should meet like this!” she said, blushing brightly.
“After all these years,” said Rodney Spelvin, taking a chance. It would be a nuisance if it turned out that they had met at a studio-party the day before yesterday, but something seemed to tell him that she dated back a goodish way. Besides, even if they had met the day before yesterday, he could get out of it by saying that the hours had seemed like years. For you cannot stymie these modern poets. The boys are there.
“More than five,” murmured Jane.
“Now where the deuce was I five years ago?” Rodney Spelvin asked himself.
Jane looked down at the pavement and shuffled her left shoe nervously.
“I got the violets, Rodney,” she said.
Rodney Spelvin was considerably fogged, but he came back strongly.
“That’s good!” he said. “You got the violets? That’s capital. I was wondering if you would get the violets.”
“It was like you to send them.”
Rodney blinked, but recovered himself immediately. He waved his hand with a careless gesture, indicative of restrained nobility.
“Oh, as to that—!”
“Especially as I’m afraid I treated you rather badly. But it really was for the happiness of both of us that I broke off the engagement. You do understand that, don’t you?”
A light broke upon Rodney Spelvin. He had been confident that it would if he only stalled along for awhile. Now he placed this girl. She was Jane something, the girl he had been engaged to. By Jove, yes. He knew where he was now.
“Do not let us speak of it,” he said, registering pain. It was quite easy for him to do this. All there was to it was tightening the lips and drawing up the left eyebrow. He had practised it in front of his mirror, for a fellow never knew when it might not come in useful.
“So you didn’t forget me, Rodney?”
“Forget you!”
There was a short pause.
“I read your novel,” said Jane. “I loved it.”
She blushed again, and the colour in her cheeks made her look so remarkably pretty that Rodney began to feel some of the emotions which had stirred him five years ago. He decided that this was a good thing and wanted pushing along.
“I hoped that you might,” he said in a low voice, massaging her hand. He broke off and directed into her eyes a look of such squashy sentimentality that Jane reeled where she stood. “I wrote it for you,” he added, simply.
Jane gasped.
“For me?”
“I supposed you would have guessed,” said Rodney. “Surely you saw the dedication?”
The Purple Fan had been dedicated, after Rodney Spelvin’s eminently prudent fashion, to “One Who Will Understand.” He had frequently been grateful for the happy inspiration.
“The dedication?”
“ ‘To One Who Will Understand,’ ” said Rodney, softly. “Who would that be but you?”
“Oh, Rodney!”
“And didn’t you recognize Eulalie, Jane? Surely you cannot have failed to recognize Eulalie?”
“Recognize her?”
“I drew her from you,” said Rodney Spelvin.
Jane’s mind was in a whirl as she went home in the train. To have met Rodney Spelvin again was enough in itself to stimulate into activity that hidden pulse of romance in her. To discover that she had been in his thoughts so continuously all these years and that she still held such sway over his faithful heart that he
