In his room, by the light of the kerosene-lamp, he took out the envelope and reed what she had written.  It was: 

Vanessa Simola, Claridon, Michigan.

He turned over the envelope and looked at the address on the other side, in his own handwriting: 

Miss Janet Spencer, Tawnleytown....

And the envelope dropped from his nerveless fingers to the table.

Who shall say how love goes or comes?  Its ways are a sacred, insoluble mystery, no less.  But it had gone for Harber:  and just as surely, though so suddenly, had it come!  Yes, life had bitterly tricked him at last.  She had sent him this girl ... too late!  The letter in the envelope was written to tell Janet Spencer that within six weeks he would be in Tawnleytown to claim her in marriage.

One must be single-minded like Harber to appreciate his terrible distress of mind.  The facile infidelity of your ordinary mortal wasn’t for Harber.  No, he had sterner stuff in him.

Vanessa!  The name seemed so beautiful ... like the girl herself, like the things she had said.  It was an Italian name.  She had told him her people had come from Venice, though she was herself thoroughly a product of America.  “So that you can never forget,” she had said.  Ah, it was the warm blood of Italy in her veins that had prompted that An American girl wouldn’t have said that!

He slit the envelope, letting the letter fall to the table, and put it in his pocket.

Yet why should he save it?  He could never see her again, he knew.  Vain had been those half-promises, those wholly lies, that his eyes and lips had given her.  For there was Janet, with her prior promises.  Ten years Janet had waited for him ... ten years ... and suddenly, aghast, he realized how long and how terrible the years are, how they can efface memories and hopes and desires, and how cruelly they had dealt with him, though he had not realized it until this moment.  Janet ... why, actually, Janet was a stranger, he didn’t know Janet any more!  She was nothing but a frail phantom of recollection:  the years had erased her!  But this girl—­warm, alluring, immediate....

No—­no!  It couldn’t be.

So much will the force of an idea do for a man, you see.  Because, of course, it could have been.  He had only to destroy the letter that lay there before him, to wait on until the next sailing, to make continued love to Vanessa, and never to go to Tawnleytown again.  There was little probability that Janet would come here for him.  Ten years and ten thousand miles ... despite all that he had vowed on Bald Knob that Sunday so long ago, wouldn’t you have said that was barrier enough?

Why, so should I!  But it wasn’t.

For Harber took the letter and put it in a fresh envelope, and in the morning he went aboard the steamer without seeing the girl again ... unless that bit of white standing near the top of the slope, as the ship churned the green harbour water heading out to sea, were she, waving.