I've invariably
said to myself, "Remember Jim Wyndham, and how he didn't think you worth
the bother of coming back to see."
Now you know why I can't describe the effect upon my mind of learning
that Jim Wyndham, the hero of my one-day romance, and Jimmy Beckett, the
dead American aviator, were one.
CHAPTER III
There could be no chance of mistake. The photograph was a very good
likeness.
For a while I sat quite still with the newspaper in my hands, living
over the day in the shabby old garden. I felt like a mourner, bereaved
of a loved one, for in a way--a schoolgirl way, perhaps--I had loved my
prince of the arbour. And always since our day together, I'd compared
other men with him, to their disadvantage. No one else ever captured my
imagination as he captured it in those few hours.
For a moment that little bit of Long Ago pushed itself between me and
Now. I was grieving for my dead romance, instead of for Brian's broken
life: but quickly I woke up. Things were as bad as ever again, and even
worse, because of their contrast with the past I'd conjured up. Grief
for the death of Jimmy Beckett mingled with grief for Brian, and
anxieties about money, in the dull, sickly way that unconnected troubles
tangle themselves together in nightmare dreams.
I'm not telling you how I suffered, as an excuse for what I did, dear
Padre. I'm only explaining how one thing led to another.
It was in thinking of Jim Wyndham, and what might have happened between
us if he'd come back to me as he promised, that the awful idea developed
in my head.
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