People opposite were
looking at them, Ernestine talked to her vis-a-vis. It was some
time before he spoke again, when he did he took up the thread of
their conversation where he had left it.
"By the majority, of course," he said. "I have wondered sometimes
whether there might be any one who would be different."
"I should be sorry," she said demurely.
"Sorry, yes; so would the tradespeople who had had my money and the
men who call themselves my friends and forget that they are my
debtors."
"You are cynical."
"I cannot help it," he answered. "It is my dream. To-day, you
know, I have stood face to face with evil things."
"Do you know," she said, "I should never have called you a dreamer,
a man likely to fancy things. I wonder if anything has really
happened to make you talk like this?"
He flashed a quick glance at her underneath his heavy brows.
Nothing in her face betrayed any more than the most ordinary
interest in what he was saying. Yet somehow, from that moment, he
had uneasy doubts concerning her, whether there might be by any
chance some reason for the tolerance and the interest with which
she had regarded him from the first. The mere suspicion of it was
a shock to him. He relapsed once more into a state of nervous
silence.
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