' It's no pleasure to me to fool people
that way, but I must answer them somehow when
they ask what made a cripple of me; and I may as
well invent something pretty while I'm about it.
You saw how pleased Galli was."
"Do you prefer pleasing Galli to speaking the truth?"
"The truth!" He looked up with the torn
fringe in his hand. "You wouldn't have me tell
those people the truth? I'd cut my tongue out
first!" Then with an awkward, shy abruptness:
"I have never told it to anybody yet; but I'll tell
you if you care to hear."
She silently laid down her knitting. To her
there was something grievously pathetic in this
hard, secret, unlovable creature, suddenly flinging
his personal confidence at the feet of a woman
whom he barely knew and whom he apparently
disliked.
A long silence followed, and she looked up.
He was leaning his left arm on the little table beside
him, and shading his eyes with the mutilated
hand, and she noticed the nervous tension of the
fingers and the throbbing of the scar on the wrist.
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