He was so pleased at seeing him tightly married.
"She 's a delightful creature," Bernard said, with cordial vagueness,
shaking hands with his friend again.
Gordon glanced at him a moment, and then, coloring a little, looked
straight out of the window; whereupon Bernard remembered that these were
just the terms in which, at Baden, after his companion's absence, he
had attempted to qualify Angela Vivian. Gordon was conscious--he was
conscious of the oddity of his situation.
"Of course it surprised you," he said, in a moment, still looking out of
the window.
"What, my dear fellow?"
"My marriage."
"Well, you know," said Bernard, "everything surprises me. I am of a very
conjectural habit of mind. All sorts of ideas come into my head, and yet
when the simplest things happen I am always rather startled. I live in a
reverie, and I am perpetually waked up by people doing things."
Gordon transferred his eyes from the window to Bernard's face--to his
whole person.
"You are waked up? But you fall asleep again!"
"I fall asleep very easily," said Bernard.
Gordon looked at him from head to foot, smiling and shaking his head.
"You are not changed," he said. "You have travelled in unknown lands;
you have had, I suppose, all sorts of adventures; but you are the same
man I used to know.
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