I guess that's
what makes the difference in the quality of my gray matter," said Nick.
"I feel riddled with bullets, and they've hit me right where I live. I--I
suppose you'll never forgive me, will you? If you only half guessed how
little I meant to butt in, or be rude, or annoy you, maybe you could,
though."
"Maybe I can--by and by; for the sake of your kindness in the past."
Angela relented. "But not even for that quite yet. And not _ever_, if you
look so stricken that you make people stare."
"I _am_ stricken," Nick confessed.
"You deserve to be." She crushed him deeper into the mire. Whereupon the
soup arrived, and they began to eat, and talk politely. Nick had never
known before that a man could be wildly happy and desperately miserable at
the same time, but now he knew. And he would not have changed places with
any other man in the world. "I'm under a spell," he said to himself, "and
I wouldn't get out of it if I could."
At the same moment Angela conjectured that there must be something strange
about the air she was breathing in this New World. "It makes one want to
act queerly," she thought. "I'm sure I should have acted quite differently
about this whole affair in Europe. It's so easy to feel conventional in
places where you've always lived, and where you know everybody.
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