I had been too much excited on the morning I had left her in
the Frenchman's cottage to think that that would be my last chance of
seeing her; that thereafter Mother Anastasia would never cease to guard
her from my speech or sight. I should have rushed in, caring for
nothing. People might have talked, but Sylvia would have known that
prohibitions and separations would make no difference in my feeling for
her.
And now I was going away without a word or a sign, or even the slightest
trifle which I could cherish as a memento of her. There was a blankness
about it all which deadened my soul.
But Walkirk was inexorable. He made every arrangement, and even
superintended my farewell to my grandmother, and gently but firmly
interrupted me, as I repeated my entreaties that she would speedily find
out something about Sylvia, and write to me. At last we were in the
carriage, with time enough to reach the station, and Walkirk wiped his
brow, as would a man who had had a heavy load lifted from his mind.
We had not gone a quarter of the distance when the thought suddenly
struck me, Why should I go away without a memento of Sylvia? Why had I
not remembered my friend Vespa, the wasp, whose flight around my
secretary's room had made the first break in the restrictions which
surrounded her; had first shown me a Sylvia in place of a gray-bonneted
nun? That dead wasp, pinned to a card on the wall of my study, was the
only thing I possessed in which Sylvia had a share.
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