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Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924

"Chance"

What Fyne precisely meant
by "wrangling" I don't know, but I had no doubt that these two had
"wrangled" to a profoundly disturbing extent. How much the other was
affected I could not even imagine; but the man before me was quite
amazingly upset.
"In a four-wheeler! Take him on board!" I muttered, startled by the
change in Fyne.
"That's the plan--nothing less. If I am to believe what I have been
told, his feet will scarcely touch the ground between the prison-gates
and the deck of that ship."
The transformed Fyne spoke in a forcibly lowered tone which I heard
without difficulty. The rumbling, composite noises of the street were
hushed for a moment, during one of these sudden breaks in the traffic as
if the stream of commerce had dried up at its source. Having an
unobstructed view past Fyne's shoulder, I was astonished to see that the
girl was still there. I thought she had gone up long before. But there
was her black slender figure, her white face under the roses of her hat.
She stood on the edge of the pavement as people stand on the bank of a
stream, very still, as if waiting--or as if unconscious of where she was.


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