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XL.
At first Jessie Milton and Mr. Hoopdriver walked away from the hotel in
silence. He heard a catching in her breath and glanced at her and saw
her ips pressed tight and a tear on her cheek. Her face was hot and
bright. She was looking straight before her. He could think of nothing
to say, and thrust his hands in his pockets and looked away from her
intentionally. After a while she began to talk. They dealt disjointedly
with scenery first, and then with the means of self-education. She took
his address at Antrobus's and promised to send him some books. But
even with that it was spiritless, aching talk, Hoopdriver felt, for
the fighting mood was over. She seemed, to him, preoccupied with the
memories of her late battle, and that appearance hurt him.
"It's the end," he whispered to himself. "It's the end."
They went into a hollow and up a gentle wooded slope, and came at last
to a high and open space overlooking a wide expanse of country. There,
by a common impulse, they stopped. She looked at her watch--a little
ostentatiously. They stared at the billows of forest rolling away
beneath them, crest beyond crest, of leafy trees, fading at last into
blue.
"The end" ran through his mind, to the exclusion of all speakable
thoughts.
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