"
She raised her head and looked at him with deep
and serious eyes. "PLEASE don't talk that way,"
she said.
He bit his lip and tore off another piece of the
rug-fringe.
"Shall I go on?" he asked after a moment.
"If--if you will. I am afraid it is horrible to
you to remember."
"Do you think I forget when I hold my tongue?
It's worse then. But don't imagine it's the thing
itself that haunts me so. It is the fact of having
lost the power over myself."
"I--don't think I quite understand."
"I mean, it is the fact of having come to the
end of my courage, to the point where I found
myself a coward."
"Surely there is a limit to what anyone can bear."
"Yes; and the man who has once reached
that limit never knows when he may reach it
again."
"Would you mind telling me," she asked, hesitating,
"how you came to be stranded out there alone at twenty?"
"Very simply: I had a good opening in life, at
home in the old country, and ran away from it."
"Why?"
He laughed again in his quick, harsh way.
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