She heard me without the exclamations I expected, her head bent over the pencil she was sharpening, and her silence continued after I had finished.

The touch of comedy I gave the whole thing--surely I was justified in that!--fell flat, and I extracted from her muteness a sense of rebuke; one would think I had been taking advantage of the poor devil.
At last, having broken the lead of her pencil three times, she turned a calm, considering eye upon me.
'You have known this for a fortnight ?' she asked.

'That doesn't seem somehow quite fair.' 'To whom ?' I asked, and her answer startled me.
'To either of us,' she said.
How she advised herself to that effect is more than I can imagine, but the print of her words is indelible, that is what she said.
'Oh, confound it!' I exclaimed.

'I couldn't help finding out, you know.' 'But you could help keeping it to yourself in that--in that base way,' she replied, and almost--the evening light was beginning to glimmer uncertainly through the deodars--I could swear I saw the flash of a tear on her eyelid.
'I beg your pardon,' she went on a moment later, 'but I do hate having to pity him.

It's intolerable--that.' I picked up a dainty edition of Aucassin and Nicolette with the intention of getting upon ground less emotional, and observed on the flyleaf 'D.H.