for whom this sympathy had been aroused was so
situated that he could not ask her for her love, whilst she could not in
any case have given it if she had been asked. Instinctively she had shut
her eyes to that which she might have read in her own soul, or in his,
if she had cared or dared to look. She had the book before her, but it
was closed and sealed. Where another woman might, have said, "I must
forget him--there is a barrier between us which neither can cross," she
said nothing; but all her training, her instinct, her delicate feeling,
even her timidity and self-distrust, led her insensibly to shun the
paths of memory which would have brought her back to the prospect that
had allured and alarmed her.

Be it remembered that she knew nothing of his later troubles. She had
heard nothing about him since she left England; and Mrs. Hartley, who
honestly believed that Alan had practically effaced himself from their
lives by his own rash act, was sufficiently unscrupulous to keep her
friend in ignorance of what had happened.

So Lettice did not mention Alan, did not keep him in her mind or try to
recall him by any active exercise of her memory; and in this sense she
had forgotten him. Time would show if the impression, so deep and vivid
in its origin, was gradually wearing away, or merely hidden out of
sight. No wonder if Mrs. Hartley thought that she was cured.

Lettice heard of the arrival of the Daltons without any other feeling
than half-selfish misgiving that her work was to be interrupted at a
critical moment, when her mind was full of the ideas on which her story
depended for its success. She had created by her imagination a little
world of human beings, instinct with life and endowed with vivid
character; she had dwelt among her creatures, guided their steps and
inspired their souls, loved them and walked with them from day to day,
until they were no mere puppets dancing to the pull of a string, but
real and veritable men and women. She could not have deserted them by
any spontaneous act of her own, and if she was to be torn away from the
world, which hung upon her fiat, she could not submit to the banishment
without at least an inward lamentation. Art spoils her votaries for the
service of society, and society, as a rule, takes its revenge by
despising or patronizing the artist whilst competing for the possession
of his works.

Brooke Dalton and his sister were lodged in an old palace not far from
Mrs. Hartle