We walked in
silence a little way, boarded a bus, then walked again. I don't suppose
that since the days of his childhood, when surely he was taken to see the
Tower, he had been once east of Temple Bar. He looked about him
sullenly; and when I pointed out in the distance the rounded front of the
Eastern Hotel at the bifurcation of two very broad, mean, shabby
thoroughfares, rising like a grey stucco tower above the lowly roofs of
the dirty-yellow, two-storey houses, he only grunted disapprovingly.
"I wouldn't lay too much stress on what you have been telling me," I
observed quietly as we approached that unattractive building. "No man
will believe a girl who has just accepted his suit to be not well
balanced,--you know."
"Oh! Accepted his suit," muttered Fyne, who seemed to have been very
thoroughly convinced indeed. "It may have been the other way about." And
then he added: "I am going through with it."
I said that this was very praiseworthy but that a certain moderation of
statement . . . He waved his hand at me and mended his pace. I guessed
that he was anxious to get his mission over as quickly as possible.
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