This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.
She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see.
That was a way she had.
My cousin began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice.
It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.
Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered
“Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.
I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.
Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well.
I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.
You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumors, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.
... and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.”
Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on.
He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.
She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body.
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