At times--often indeed--his thoughts wandered to the
maple-grove and the old sugar-house, far away on the Hudson. Memories of
the girl would not be banished, nor longings for her. Who she might be,
he still knew not. Unwilling to learn, he had refrained from looking up
the number he had copied from the plate of the wrecked machine. He had
even abstained from reading the papers, a few days, lest he might see
some account of the accident. A strange kind of unwillingness to know
the woman's name possessed him--a feeling that, if he positively
identified her as one of some famous clan of robbers and exploiters, he
could no longer cherish her memory or love the thought of how they two
had, for an hour, sat together and talked and been good, honest friends.
"No," he murmured to himself, "it's better this way--just to recall her
as a girl in need, a girl who let me help her, a girl I can always
remember with kind thoughts, as long as I live!"
From his pocket he took the little handkerchief, which wrapped the
leaf, once part of her bed.
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