“I didn’t forget him. I have never forgotten him, that stone image which stood in my heart and then broke itself to pieces because of some law I did not, do not, understand. But there is a law I do understand, a cruel kind of law, and that is the law of reaction. He wrote me letters at long intervals; cold, honest bits of writing, strong-and-silent-backbone-of-Empire stuff, and rather pompous with their appreciations of me tacked on to descriptions of the desert and the natives. But I wrote to him only once, explaining myself, explaining him. Oh, it was a wonderful letter, the one wonderful letter of my life! I gave all I had to give in that letter, but it didn’t seem to warm him at all, and I hadn’t the heart or the energy to write again. “He became a tender memory ... and I fell in love again, Raymond. But not as with my stone image, oh, no! This was the sort of man who didn’t count except in that I loved him, or thought I did. He was really no more than the servant of my reaction against the stone image, and to serve me well he had to help me demolish all the castles of sentiment I had built around him. And the stoutest and most beautiful castle of all I had built around that funny little Welsh inn! The memory of our days there haunted me: it made everything else seem not worth while, and so I told myself that something must be done about that, else it looked to be spoiling my whole life with regrets. Nothing in the world repeats itself except regret--and, of course, sardines. And so, Raymond, I set my horse to that last castle, to crash into it recklessly, gallantly, and to stride and laugh about its halls with another man, who was not a stone image, not so beautiful. “We went, my reaction and I. In an exceedingly fast car we went, going ever so fast, so that when I tumbled out of it at that inn I had had no time to think. Now the sweetest thing in that little inn was its miniature dining-room, which was entirely composed of a large bow window and three little tables; and the largest thing about it was the view of the hills all round, and a brown stream which tumbled about at the bottom of the garden and made more noise than you could believe possible for so little a thing. My stone image and I had sat at the table by the bow window, and now my reaction and I sat there again. I dreamed, he ate. My back was to the door, and I sat facing a large mirror, the stream and the hills on my right; he sat facing the window, adoring me, the adventure, the hills, the food. I wasn’t unhappy; perhaps I was a little absent-minded, but I am sure I wasn’t unhappy--until, in the mirror in front of me, I saw the great figure, the fair hair, the frozen blue eyes, at the open door. Our eyes met in the mirror, the eyes of statues, wondering, waiting....