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Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924

"Chance"

And even that
didn't matter. He could not despise her more than she despised herself.
She must have been light-headed because the thought came into her mind
that should he get into ungovernable fury from disappointment, and
perchance strangle her, it would be as good a way to be done with it as
any.
"You had that thought," I exclaimed in wonder.
With downcast eyes and speaking with an almost painstaking precision (her
very lips, her red lips, seemed to move just enough to be heard and no
more), she said that, yes, the thought came into her head. This makes
one shudder at the mysterious ways girls acquire knowledge. For this was
a thought, wild enough, I admit, but which could only have come from the
depths of that sort of experience which she had not had, and went far
beyond a young girl's possible conception of the strongest and most
veiled of human emotions.
"He was there, of course?" I said.
"Yes, he was there." She saw him on the path directly she stepped
outside the porch. He was very still. It was as though he had been
standing there with his face to the door for hours.


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