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ONLY an incident!" He had said that that was all he should be, in her memory, and that she would forget him in three months.
She knew that she should never forget him. That last scene in the forest had made it impossible.
It was not for himself alone, nor even the fact of his emotion for her. That had left with her a tenderness for him—but a faint, a gentle tenderness. It was the least emotional recognition she could give of what nevertheless had touched her heart—that he should really, genuinely, care anything for her, after all her frank egotism toward him, her absorption in herself, her crudeness. … That speech, for example, up at Anthemoz, about using her relation with him as a spur to Basil! In spite of all that, and of the fact that she could give him nothing really, he had liked her. She was grateful. And she was dimly, passionately grateful for his bearing toward her at that last moment. …
There was the reason why she should never forget him. He had understood. There, at the end, he had protected her.
And it was like a flash of light over a new
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