The Silent Valley

the long version

If I should meet thee, after long years, how should I greet thee? With silence and tears... It would be with silence and tears, Nurse Jane Calvert knew, that she greeted Stuart Hemmingway when he came as surgeon to Conyers Park Nursing Home. Years ago, when he had begged her to marry him, her love had been great enough to ask him to wait, in the interests of his career; but he had not understood. He had stormed against her "faithlessness," her "puny love," and gone away in bitterness to win brilliant success, vowing never to forgive Jane as long as he lived. And yet, even when Jane's head denied all hope, her heart stubbornly kept hope alive.