"Please don't scent and stain your fingers with that filthy tobacco," said
I rather harshly.
"And only this afternoon you were saying you had become reconciled to my
vice--that you had canonized it along with me--wasn't that your phrase?"
This indifferently, without turning toward me, and as if she were thinking
of something else.
"So I have," retorted I. "But my mood--please oblige me this once."
She let the cigarette fall into the box, closed the lid gently, leaned
against the table, folded her arms upon her bosom and looked full at me.
I was as acutely conscious of her every movement, of the very coming and
going of the breath at her nostrils, as a man on the operating-table is
conscious of the slightest gesture of the surgeon.
"You are--suffering!" she said, and her voice was like the flow of oil upon
a burn. "I have never seen you like this. I didn't believe you capable
of--of much feeling."
I could not trust myself to speak. If Bob Corey could have looked in on
that scene, could have understood it, how amazed he would have been!
"What happened down town to-day?" she went on. "Tell me, if I may know."
"I'll tell you what I didn't think, ten minutes ago, I'd tell any human
being," said I.
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