edge of my passion. Yet cold memory
blinked at this very possibility.

I had parted from other women, thinking that thoughts of them must fill
the rest of my life to the exclusion of everything else; only to find
that after a little lapse of time their images faded, and even the
memory of what they had been to me had no power to think.

So might it be with Lucy. "You know it _might_," said cold memory.
"Don't be a fool--you think it _won't_, but you know it might."

"But," I argued, "this is different. No other woman ever loved me as
she does. I may be a fool, but her eyes have spoken, and I know the
truth when I hear it."

"She _does_ love you," said my other self, which I have called cold
memory, "and she did love him, and before his time, others, if only
briefly. Without the sight of you to feed on, her love will starve and
die. It is almost always so."

"Almost."

"There are exceptions. Is it likely, considering your records, that
you and she will be an exception? It is not likely."

It wasn't. John Fulton was probably right. He believed that time
would cure us, and almost the whole of human experience agreed with him.

And wouldn't it be better if we were cured? Far better. I had to
admit that. We ought, indeed, to hope that we should be cured; to help
with all our strength in the effecting of that cure. And conversely,
Lucy ought to try to return to her affection for John and to her duty.

Suddenly I felt cold and shivery as before undergoing an operation.

Poor little Lucy! Even now she must be listening to John's ultimatum,
as I had listened, but with this difference; she could not see the
justice and the logic of his position. She would only see that she was
being cruelly hurt, and thwarted, and disappointed; that she was being
curbed and punished by forces too strong for her to cope with. And I
pictured her, all reserve gone at last, a tortured child--just sobbing.
It seemed to me that I must go to her or die. And indeed I went a
little way toward their hotel. Then I thought, perhaps her sobs would
move him to a change of heart. Perhaps he will weaken, and let her go.
Upon the strength of this thought I returned to my own hotel, rearing a
blissful edifice of immediate happiness.

I sat in the lobby in a position of reading, a newspaper before my
face; but I did not read. I was listening for the boy who would page
me to the telephone. Many names were called in the lobby, but it