FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83  
84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   >>   >|  
nd not _ever_, if you look so stricken that you make people stare." "I _am_ stricken," Nick confessed. "You deserve to be." She crushed him deeper into the mire. Whereupon the soup arrived, and they began to eat, and talk politely. Nick had never known before that a man could be wildly happy and desperately miserable at the same time, but now he knew. And he would not have changed places with any other man in the world. "I'm under a spell," he said to himself, "and I wouldn't get out of it if I could." At the same moment Angela conjectured that there must be something strange about the air she was breathing in this New World. "It makes one want to act queerly," she thought. "I'm sure I should have acted quite differently about this whole affair in Europe. It's so easy to feel conventional in places where you've always lived, and where you know everybody. Or is it only because this man's so different from any one else? I thought I was beginning to understand his nature, but now I see I don't. The thing is, I was _too_ nice to him. I oughtn't to have asked him to lunch and dine in New Orleans. That began the mischief. And it was my fault more than his." But then, according to the man's own confession, the mischief had begun in New York. "I wish I could make myself enjoy snubbing the extraordinary creature," she went on, as she ate her dinner, throwing an occasional sentence concerning the scenery, or, as a last resort, the weather, to her chastened companion. "But it's difficult to snub a person who's saved your life and lent you money and found your gold bag. That's why he oughtn't to have put me in this position--because I owe him gratitude. It's really horrid." And she began to feel sincerely that the New Type had conducted itself unworthily. She gave Nick a cool bow when she was ready to go, and left him plunged in gloom, but stubbornly unrepentant. "It's a tough proposition I'm up against," he thought, "but a man's as good as his nerve. And I'll fight till the next spring rains sooner than let her slip away out of my life." It was deep blue dusk when Angela went back to her stateroom, too dark to look out of the window; yet she had lost interest in the book which she had found absorbing earlier in the day. It seemed irrelevant somehow; and though there was no reason why they should do so, her own affairs appeared more insistently exciting than before. "It's the call of the West already," she answered her o
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83  
84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
thought
 

Angela

 

mischief

 

oughtn

 

stricken

 
places
 
gratitude
 

horrid

 
appeared
 

exciting


insistently

 

reason

 
affairs
 

position

 
sentence
 

scenery

 
occasional
 
dinner
 

throwing

 

resort


sincerely

 

person

 

difficult

 

companion

 

weather

 

answered

 

chastened

 

window

 

interest

 

stateroom


spring

 
sooner
 

proposition

 

irrelevant

 

unworthily

 
conducted
 

unrepentant

 
absorbing
 

earlier

 
stubbornly

plunged
 

changed

 
wouldn
 
strange
 

breathing

 

moment

 
conjectured
 

miserable

 
desperately
 

deserve