She bit her lips,
rose, and ran eagerly to the window. She saw his straw hat and brown
curls as he crossed the road. She drew her handkerchief sharply away
from the withered shrub over which she had thrown it, and cast the once
treasured remains in the hearth. Then, possibly because she had it
ready in her hand, she clapped the handkerchief to her eyes, and sinking
sideways upon the chair he had risen from, put her elbows on its back,
and buried her face in her hands.
It is the characteristic and perhaps cruelty of a simple nature to make
no allowance for complex motives, or to even understand them! So it
seemed to Barker that his simplicity had been met with equal directness.
It was the possession of this wealth that had in some way hopelessly
changed his relations with the world. He did not love Kitty any the
less; he did not even think she had wronged him; they, his partners and
his sweetheart, were cleverer than he; there must be some occult quality
in this wealth that he would understand when he possessed it, and
perhaps it might even make him ashamed of his generosity; not in the way
they had said, but in his tempting them so audaciously to assume a wrong
position. It behoved him to take possession of it at once, and to take
also upon himself alone the knowledge, the trials, and responsibilities
it would incur. His cheeks flushed again as he thought he had tried to
tempt an innocent girl with it, and he was keenly hurt that he had not
seen in Kitty's eyes the tenderness that had softened his partners'
refusal.
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