In some ten minutes I slackened speed and looked back. For a long
distance behind me not a bicycle was in sight. I now pursued my
homeward way with a warm body and a lacerated heart. I hated this
region which I had called Cathay. Its inhabitants were not barbarians,
but I was suffering from their barbarities. I had come among them
clean, whole, with an upright bearing. I was going away torn, bloody,
and downcast.
If the last words of the lady of the Holly Sprig meant the sweet thing
I thought they meant, then did they make the words which preceded them
all the more bitter. The more friendly and honest the counsels of
Edith Larramie had grown, the deeper they had cut into my heart. Even
the more than regard with which my soul prompted me to look back to
Amy Willoughby was a pain to me. My judgment would enrage me if it
should try to compel me to feel as I did not want to feel.
But none of these wounds would have so pained and disturbed me had it
not been for the merciless gaze which that dark-eyed girl had fixed
upon me as she passed me standing in the road.
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