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have bitten out his tongue at the Larkins sound of it.
"I shan't forget it," she remarked consolingly.
"I say," she said in the pause that followed. "Why are you riding
about the country on a bicycle?"
"I'm doing it because I like it."
She sought to estimate his social status on her limited basis of
experience. He stood leaning with one hand against the wall, looking
up at her and tingling with daring thoughts. He was a littleish man,
you must remember, but neither mean-looking nor unhandsome in those
days, sunburnt by his holiday and now warmly flushed. He had an
inspiration to simple speech that no practised trifler with love could
have bettered. "There is love at first sight," he said, and said it
sincerely.
She stared at him with eyes round and big with excitement.
"
I think," she said slowly, and without any signs of fear or retreat,
I ought to get back over the wall."
"
"It needn't matter to you," he said. "I'm just a nobody. But I know
you are the best and most beautiful thing I've ever spoken to." His
breath caught against something. "No harm in telling you that," he
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