He saw in the tree-shadows a yellow motor-car
drawn up by the side of the road, and in it a beautiful, pale girl,
hatless, with disordered golden hair and a torn white dress. He saw a man
with the girl, and heard her say that it would have been better to die
than let herself care for him.
"Yet she _did_ care for me," Nick told himself obstinately. "There's no
getting over that. She said, 'You mustn't think I don't care.'" And even
if she hadn't said it, there was that look in her eyes. Could he ever
forget the look, or cease to thrill at the memory? No; he knew that he
could not, till the hour of his death. "It was because I'm not of her
world, that she couldn't bear to let herself go, and love me as she was
beginning to love me, I know," he thought, as he had thought countless
times before, in the weeks since he had quietly let her go out of his
life. "I'm not what she's been brought up to call a gentleman," his mind
went on drearily preaching to him. "I suppose I can't realize the bigness
and deepness of the gulf between us, as she sees it. I've only my own
standards to judge by. Hers are mighty different. I knew there _was_ a
gulf, but I hoped love would bridge it. She thought no bridge could be
strong enough for her to walk on to me.
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