The resentment of her narrow-mindedness,
the shame for her ignorance passed; the sense of her devotion
remained.
'Manda Grier wanted her to go home with her for part of the summer,
but she would not have consented if Lemuel had not insisted. She
wrote him back ill-spelt, scrawly little letters, in one of which
she told him that her cough was all gone, and she was as well as
ever. She took a little more cold when she returned to town in the
first harsh September weather, and her cough returned, but she said
she did not call it anything now.
The hotel began to fill up again for the winter. Berry preceded the
art-students by some nervous weeks, in which he speculated upon what
he should do if they did not come at all. Then they came, and the
winter passed, with repetitions of the last winter's events, and a
store of common memories that enriched the present, and insensibly
deepened the intimacy in which Lemuel found himself. He could not
tell whither the present was carrying him; he only knew that he had
drifted so far from the squalor of his past, that it seemed like the
shadow of a shameful dream.
He did not go to see Statira so often as he used; and she was
patient with his absences, and defended him against 'Manda Grier,
who did not scruple to tell her that she believed the fellow was
fooling with her, and who could not always keep down a mounting
dislike of Lemuel in his presence.
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