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has let her lovely length trail into the corner of the sofa, where she desperately reclines, supporting her elbow on the arm of it, and resting her drooping head on her hand. He draws a hassock up in front of her, and sits on it. _Ashley_: "This represents kneeling at your feet. One doesn't do it literally any more, you know." _Miss Ramsey_, in a hollow voice: "I should despise you if you did, and"--deeply murmurous--"I don't _wish_ to despise you." _Ashley_: "No, I understand that. You merely wish _me_ to despise _you_. But why?" _Miss Ramsey_, nervously: "You know." _Ashley_: "But I don't know--Isobel, dearest, darling, if you will allow me to express myself so fully. _How_ should I know?" _Miss Ramsey_: "I've told you." _Ashley_: "May I take your hand? For good-by!" He possesses himself of it. "It seems to go along with those expressions." _Miss Ramsey_, self-contemptuously: "Oh yes." _Ashley_: "Thank you. Where were we?" _Miss Ramsey_, sitting up and recovering her hand: "You were saying good-by--" _Ashley_: "Was I? But not before I had told you that I knew you were doing all that for my best good, and I wish--I _wish_ you could have seen how exemplary you looked when you were trying to pour a cocktail out of a corked bottle, between your remarks on passionate fiction and puffs of the insidious cigarette! When the venomous tobacco began to get in its deadly work, and you turned pale and reeled a little, and called for air, it made me mentally vow to go back to Miss Fray instantly, whether I was engaged to her or not, and cut out poor old Brooks--" _Miss Ramsey_: "Was it Mr. Brooks? I didn't hear the name exactly." _Ashley_: "When I was telling Miss Garnett? I ought to have spoken louder, but I wasn't sure at the time you were listening. Though as you were saying, what does it matter now?" _Miss Ramsey_: "Did I say that?" _Ashley_: "Words to that effect. And they have made me feel how unworthy of you I am. I'm not heroic--by nature. But I could be, if you made me--by art--" _Miss Ramsey_, springing to her feet indignantly: "Now, you are ridiculing me--you are making fun of me." _Ashley_, gathering himself up from his hassock with difficulty, and confronting her: "Do I look like a man who would dare to make fun of you? I am half a head shorter than you, and in moral grandeur you overtop me so that I would always have to wear a high hat when I was with you." _Miss Ramsey_, th
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