I don't pretend that you'll always come out right in
the end if you do the big thing, but I'm pretty sure of this; that you
never come out at all if you refuse it."
His amazement over what she had done increased as he thought about it
and was testified to every now and then by grunts and snorts and little
exclamations, but he made no more articulate comment.
There was a seven-thirty train she thought she ought to take back to
town and as their walk had led in that direction they finished it at the
station, where he waited with her for the train to come in.
"It's been a good day," she said. "I feel as if you'd somehow pulled me
through."
"And I," he said, "feel like a wind-bag. I've talked and talked; smug
comfortable preaching."
"No, it's helped," she insisted. "Or something has. Just having you
there, perhaps. I feel better, anyway."
But after she'd got her last look at him on the platform, when the train
had carried her off, an observer, seeing the way the color faded out of
her face, and the look in the eyes, which, so wide open and so unseeing,
stared straight ahead, would have said that the benefit hadn't lasted
long.
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