He can't send you back--"
"Oh, I don't want to go back!" he broke in. "I want a new field."
He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety;
and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the poignancy,
the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of
three months with all this bravado and still more dishonor. It overwhelmed me
now that I should never be able to bear that, and it made me let myself go.
I threw myself upon him and in the tenderness of my pity I embraced him.
"Dear little Miles, dear little Miles--!"
My face was close to his, and he let me kiss him, simply taking it
with indulgent good humor. "Well, old lady?"
"Is there nothing--nothing at all that you want to tell me?"
He turned off a little, facing round toward the wall and holding
up his hand to look at as one had seen sick children look.
"I've told you--I told you this morning."
Oh, I was sorry for him! "That you just want me not to worry you?"
He looked round at me now, as if in recognition of my understanding him;
then ever so gently, "To let me alone," he replied.
There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made
me release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him.
God knows I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this,
to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him.
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