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DARK HESTER

sumed his pacing, ‘from her point of view. She is a modern girl; but only in the way of freedom; not of licence, and she felt contemporaneity in love affairs an unforgivable affront and injury. All the same I should have kept straight, for I loved her very deeply, if another woman hadn’t turned up, a woman I had loved in India, years before. It was only a month after Hester gave me this ring.’ He glanced over at her with a twist of his grim smile.—‘Poor old Aunt Harriet! To what uses I tried to put her! When I saw your face that morning I felt sure you had seen the initials; but you spoke of great-grandmothers and that gave me the clue and I forgot about the date.—Well, the other woman came to Paris with her husband, for the Peace Conference. I was there, too, and Hester was secretary to another bigwig;—that was how we met. It was a shock to see the other woman again. I am very susceptible, you know, and she was still quite extraordinarily lovely; not happy with her husband and her boy killed in the war. She had never relinquished her sense of a special claim on me because I was her only affair, and she made the most of her griefs and memories. But it was my fault. I was faithless, and Hester found it out. She already suspected that something was amiss when, by some mischance, they met

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