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twice. You figure him, tearing through the glaring, thunder-voiced city
at a pace of fifty miles an hour, the city upon the planet that spins
along its chartless path through space many thousands of miles an hour,
funking most terribly, and trying to understand why the heart and will
in him should suffer and keep alive.
When at last he came to Elizabeth, she was white and anxious. He might
have noted she was in trouble, had it not been for his own
preoccupation. He feared most that she would desire to know every detail
of his indignities, that she would be sympathetic or indignant. He saw
her eyebrows rise at the sight of him.
"I've had rough handling," he said, and gasped. "It's too fresh--too
hot. I don't want to talk about it." He sat down with an unavoidable air
of sullenness.
She stared at him in astonishment, and as she read something of the
significant hieroglyphic of his battered face, her lips whitened. Her
hand--it was thinner now than in the days of their prosperity, and her
first finger was a little altered by the metal punching she
did--clenched convulsively. "This horrible world!" she said, and said no
more.
In these latter days they had become a very silent couple; they said
scarcely a word to each other that night, but each followed a private
train of thought. In the small hours, as Elizabeth lay awake, Denton
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