Is it that I have intruded too much into their
family life? Have I come between the husband and the
wife? Goodness knows I have striven with all my little
stock of tact to avoid doing so. And yet I have often
felt that my position was a false one. Perhaps a young
man attaches too much importance to a woman's glances and
gestures. He wishes to assign a definite meaning to
each, when they may be only the passing caprice of the
moment. Ah, well, I have nothing to blame myself with;
and in any case it will soon be all over now.
And then I have seen something of the same sort in
Cullingworth; but he is so strange a being that I
never attach much importance to his variations. He
glares at me like an angry bull occasionally; and then
when I ask him what is the matter, he growls out, "Oh,
nothing!" and turns on his heel. Then at other times he
is so cordial and friendly that he almost overdoes it,
and I find myself wondering whether he is not acting. It
must seem ungracious to you that I should speak so of a
man who has been my benefactor; and it seems so to me
also, but still that IS the impression which he
leaves upon me sometimes. It's an absurd idea, too; for
what possible object could his wife and he have in
pretending to be amiable, if they did not really feel so?
And yet you know the feeling that you get when a man
smiles with his lips and not with his eyes.
One day we went to the Central Hotel billiard-room in
the evening to play a match.
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