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Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

"The Captives"

The mess I've been in before
is because I always make wrong shots . . ."
His words ceased. Their hearts were beating too tumultuously
together for words to be possible. Maggie did not wish to speak, she
could not. She was mingled with him, her heart his, her lips his,
her check his . . . She did not believe that words would come even
though she wished for them. She was utterly happy--so utterly that
she was, as it were, numb with happiness. They murmured one
another's names.
"Martin."
"Maggie! . . ."
At last, dreaming, scarcely knowing what they did, like two children
in a dark wood, they wandered towards home.


CHAPTER VIII
PARADISE

Maggie had never really been happy before. She had of course not
known this; her adventures in introspection had been very few,
besides she had not known what happiness looked like; her father,
her uncle, and her aunts were not exactly happy people . . .
Now she flung herself without thought or care into a flood of
happiness, and as sometimes occurs in life, she was granted by the
gods, beneficent or ironic as you please, a period of security when
everything menacing or dangerous withdrew and it seemed as though
the whole world were in a conspiracy to cheat her into confidence.


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