For she found that the memories of more than twenty summers at Fair Harbor had been wiped out by those of one summer, by those of one man.

The natives greeted her joyously: the boatmen, the fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the village postmaster, the oldest inhabitant.

They welcomed her as though they were her vassals and she their queen.

But it was the one man she had exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused her throat to tighten.

She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used to wait for him in the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively to his open windows.