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'Dick,' she cried suddenly, 'perhaps I might - perhaps in
time - perhaps - '
'There is no perhaps about the matter,' interrupted Dick. 'I
must go and bring the phaeton.' And with that he strode from
the station, all in a glow of passion and virtue. Esther,
whose eyes had come alive and her cheeks flushed during these
last words, relapsed in a second into a state of
petrifaction. She remained without motion during his
absence, and when he returned suffered herself to be put back
into the phaeton, and driven off on the return journey like
an idiot or a tired child. Compared with what she was now,
her condition of the morning seemed positively natural. She
sat white and cold and silent, and there was no speculation
in her eyes. Poor Dick flailed and flailed at the pony, and
once tried to whistle, but his courage was going down; huge
clouds of despair gathered together in his soul, and from
time to time their darkness was divided by a piercing flash
of longing and regret. He had lost his love - he had lost
his love for good.
The pony was tired, and the hills very long and steep, and
the air sultrier than ever, for now the breeze began to fail
entirely. It seemed as if this miserable drive would never
be done, as if poor Dick would never be able to go away and
be comfortably wretched by himself; for all his desire was to
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