The sentence was not finished. Jane sat with burning cheeks, gazing at the closely written paper. How could he write like that—as if he still cared when he was taking this Prix de Rome? The Prix de Rome? What was the Prix de Rome? Jane didn’t know and felt she didn’t care. What was any prize, any reward, any opportunity compared with love? Love, such as she and André had known? He had forgotten. She must face that fact. He must have forgotten. If he had remembered, nothing would have counted, counted for one moment, against the joy of reunion. “Next spring, if you want me, I’ll come without fail!” Pallid words! Insulting words. Really insulting, from André to her. What had the four years done to her? What had they done to him? Jane turned again to the letter.
“Write me, dear Jane, that you understand. And tell me that you will want to see me, next spring, only half as much as I want to see you.
“ ‘Her—André’!” Jane’s cheeks flushed again at the irony of the phrase. But there was still a postscript.
“I think you’d like my fountain. It’s the best thing I’ve done. I wish I could show it to you. It’s a study of Narcissus, gazing at his own reflection in the water. There’s a nymph behind him, a deserted nymph, standing with arms outstretched, ignored, forgotten, as he stares, infatuated, in the crystal pool. There’s something of you in the nymph, Jane. There’s something of you in all my nymphs and Eves and saints and Madonnas. Something you brought into my life. Romance, I guess it is. Nothing more tangible.
Something of her in the deserted nymph! Something of him, thought Jane, with unwonted irony, in the fatuous Narcissus! And for this André she had been keeping herself for the last four years! This André who would rather go to Italy and take his Prix de Rome than cross the ocean to see the girl that—For this André she had been steeling her heart against Stephen. Stephen who loved her and wanted her and was going to war, still wanting her more than life itself. Stephen who had been her very slave for the last eighteen months, who had loved her from the moment that he set eyes on her in Flora’s little ballroom.
Jane rose and went to her desk. She pulled out her best notepaper and seated herself squarely before her little blotter. When you killed things, thought Jane grimly, you killed them quickly.
“Dear André,” she wrote, “I loved your letter. And of course I remember everything. Quite as much, I am sure, as you do yourself I understand perfectly about the Prix de Rome and I hope very much you will come to Chicago next spring. I should love to see you and I should love to have you meet the man I am going to marry. His name is Stephen Carver and he is going to war, immediately, to fight the Spaniards. I shall marry him before he goes.
“As you say, we were both children, four years ago.” Jane paused a moment, trying vainly to blink away her tears. It had been just a dream, she knew, but the end of even a dream was very dreadful. “Like you I was awfully upset, at first, but as you say, life is life. I loved my years at Bryn Mawr with Agnes. Soon after I came home I met Stephen. He has just persuaded me to marry him. Of course I am terribly happy.”
Jane paused to wipe her eyes, then added, as an afterthought. “Except for the war.” That seemed to dispose of everything she thought. Just one more word was needed. She wrote it—“Jane.”
She mailed the note before dressing for dinner. When she came up to her room again André’s letter was still lying on her desk. She made a sudden movement as if to tear it into a hundred pieces. Then checked herself and slowly put it back in its envelope. André might be incredibly different. André might have forgotten. She would pluck him from her heart. But the André that he used to be was still the lover of her childhood. Jane felt an odd sense of outrage at the thought of denying the past. She slipped the letter into a desk drawer. Jane turned slowly toward her closet door. She would wear her prettiest dress for Stephen. She would tell him at once that she would marry him. She would try to make up to him for the way she had treated him. What if Stephen, discouraged, had forsaken her? Jane felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for Stephen’s faithfulness. She had never appreciated it before. Of course she loved him. She loved him and she would marry him. It was perfectly terrible that he was going to war.
IV
Jane stood before her mirror, gazing incredulously through her snowy veil at the slim white reflection that was herself. Fancy dress, it seemed to her, this paraphernalia of bridal finery. Isabel stood at her side, holding her shower bouquet of lilies of the valley. Her mother was leaning against the bureau, looking her up and down and softly crying. Isabel’s eyes were full of tears. Minnie, standing admiringly at the bedroom door, was pressing a mussy handkerchief to trembling lips.
After the past two weeks, however, Jane was quite accustomed to being cried over. She was a hero’s bride, dedicated to a romantic destiny that had not left a dry eye in her little circle. Even Muriel had cried, and Mrs. Lester, of course, and Rosalie. Jane wondered if Agnes and Marion had wept a little in Bryn Mawr and Flora
