Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/204

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192
FIDELIA

loving girl who was off here alone with him, away from the rest of the world, and who was his wife! Everywhere she had been, men must have sought her; and one, at least, had made her care for him.

What memories of that man were coming, bidden or unbidden to her thoughts, as images of Alice came to his own?

David wondered about this so much that he dared not ask, without some excuse which would make his question casual. So he put it off during the day; and then, at night, asked it abruptly, after all.

They were in camp and cooking their supper when David suddenly said: "What was his name?"

"Sam's name?" asked Fidelia.

"I didn't know even that his name was Sam," said David, quivering with realization this Sam was, at the same moment, in his wife's mind.

"It was," Fidelia told him.

"What was the rest of his name?"

"Bolton."

"You were engaged to him once?"

"Yes, David."

"When he died, you were?"

"What?"

"Engaged to him?"

Fidelia gazed into the campfire and thought; and David wondered: "Why does she have to think? Can't she remember that?" Then she looked at him, very seriously and said: "Not exactly, David."

She replied so soberly that David explained to himself: "Bolton's dead; and of course she wants to be