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Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924

"Chance"


Losing a girl-friend in that manner is unpleasant. It is also
mysterious. So mysterious that a certain mystery attaches to the people
to whom such a thing does happen. Moreover I had never really understood
the Fynes; he with his solemnity which extended to the very eating of
bread and butter; she with that air of detachment and resolution in
breasting the common-place current of their unexciting life, in which the
cutting of bread and butter appeared to me, by a long way, the most
dangerous episode. Sometimes I amused myself by supposing that to their
minds this world of ours must be wearing a perfectly overwhelming aspect,
and that their heads contained respectively awfully serious and extremely
desperate thoughts--and trying to imagine what an exciting time they must
be having of it in the inscrutable depths of their being. This last was
difficult to a volatile person (I am sure that to the Fynes I was a
volatile person) and the amusement in itself was not very great; but
still--in the country--away from all mental stimulants! . . . My efforts
had invested them with a sort of amusing profundity.


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