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personality who had been captivating him into forgetting everything else, at the reappearance of the blank, the pale and insignificant personality attached to a typewriting machine at ten dollars a week. No, not insignificant, not blank--never again that, for him. He saw now the full reality--and also why he, everyone, was so misled. She made him think of the surface of the sea when the sky is gray and the air calm. It lies smooth and flat and expressionless--inert, monotonous. But let sunbeam strike or breeze ever so faint start up, and what a commotion of unending variety! He could never look at her again without being reminded of those infinite latent possibilities, without wondering what new and perhaps more charming, more surprising varieties of look and tone and manner could be evoked. And while Sanders was talking--prosing on and on about things Norman either already knew or did not wish to know--he was thinking of her. "If she happens to meet a man with enough discernment to fall in love with her," he said to himself, "he certainly will never weary. What a pity that such a girl shouldn't have had a chance, should be wasted on some unappreciative chucklehead of her class! What a pity she hasn't ambition--or the quality, whatever it is--that makes those who have it get on, whether they wish or no." During the rest of the day he revolved from time to time indistinct ideas of somehow giving this girl a chance. He wished Josephine would and could help, or perhaps his sister Ursula. It was not a matter that could be settled, or even taken up, in haste. No man of his mentality and experience fails to learn how perilous it is in the least to interfere in the destiny of anyone. And his notion involved not slight interference with advice or suggestion or momentarily extended helping hand, but radical change of the whole current of destiny. Also, he appreciated how difficult it is for a man to do anything for a young woman--anything that would not harm more than it would help. Only one thing seemed clear to him--the "clever child" ought to have a chance. He went to see Josephine after dinner that night His own house, while richly and showily furnished, as became his means and station, seemed--and indeed was--merely an example of simple, old-fashioned "solid comfort" in comparison with the Burroughs palace. He had never liked, but, being a true New Yorker, had greatly admired the splendor of that palace, its costly a
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