Raising
and tending hogs!"
The dead whiteness of Glenn's face, the lightning scorn of his eyes, the
grim, stark strangeness of him then had for Carley a terrible harmony with
this passionate denunciation of her, of her kind, of the America for whom
he had lost all.
"Oh, Glenn!--forgive--me!" she faltered. "I was only--talking. What do I
know? Oh, I am blind--blind and little!"
She could not bear to face him for a moment, and she hung her head. Her
intelligence seemed concentrating swift, wild thoughts round the shock to
her consciousness. By that terrible expression of his face, by those
thundering words of scorn, would she come to realize the mighty truth of
his descent into the abyss and his rise to the heights. Vaguely she began
to see. An awful sense of her deadness, of her soul-blighting selfishness,
began to dawn upon her as something monstrous out of dim, gray obscurity.
She trembled under the reality of thoughts that were not new. How she had
babbled about Glenn and the crippled soldiers! How she had imagined she
sympathized! But she had only been a vain, worldly, complacent, effusive
little fool. She had here the shock of her life, and she sensed a greater
one, impossible to grasp.
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