Must I throw this one away, too?" he
asked, with a glance that was very ardent for a friend; "for since
I obtained it for you, it must receive its fate at your hands only."
"I'll wear it, simply as your gift, with pleasure," and she fastened
it in her breastpin, so that its crimson blush rested against the
snowy whiteness of her neck.
He looked her full in the eyes and said, with low, sad emphasis:
"I do not deserve such respect." Then the knowledge that she was
harboring a purpose which troubled her conscience, but which she
could not abandon, became the cause of a trace of her old recklessness
of manner. She assumed a sudden gayety, as if she had stepped out
of shadows into too strong a light, as she said:
"Mr. Van Berg, you may well hesitate to bring the appetite you say
had last night to our house this evening, and if I stay a moment
longer, you will get no dinner at all. I have not been after the
crude material--as you call it--yet, and I'm told that there is not
a man living so amiable and philosophical, but that a poor dinner
provokes martyr-like expression, if nothing worse;" and with a smile
and a piquancy of manner that seemed peculiarly brilliant against
the background of her deep and repressed feeling, she again left
him.
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