Pagina 459 di 490

"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to any one

else. I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what

I mean. She was quite beautiful and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane.

I think it was that which first attracted me to her. You remember

Sibyl, don't you? How long ago that seems! Well, Hetty was not

one of our own class, of course. She was simply a girl in a

village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure that I loved

her. All during this wonderful May that we have been having, I

used to run down and see her two or three times a week. Yesterday

she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept tumbling

down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone away

together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her

as flowerlike as I had found her."