The second, in reply to his telegram of congratulation, had run
in another key; an utter weariness and an almost disgusted satiety seemed
to have superseded her former interest. Side by side with these he had
discovered in the repressed but eloquent words of her greeting to him an
intense desire to see him. "I want a change so badly," she wrote. "I want
somebody unpractical, unpushing. You must come directly we're back in
town." They had been back in town ten days, he knew, but he had not yet
obeyed her summons. The thought crossed his mind that the contrast
between her two letters was an odd parallel to Dick's description of the
puzzling demeanour of his brother Jimmy. Was it a characteristic of the
man's to produce these sudden and startling changes of mood towards
himself? Marchmont was puzzled at the notion; he was too little able to
sympathise with the attraction to find himself capable of understanding
the force and extent of the revulsion. "At all events she must be pretty
well prepared for what he is by now," he said to himself with the mixture
of pity and resentment which his love for her and her rejection of him in
Quisante's favour had bred in his mind.
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