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The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
page 34 of 167 (20%)
between us; but oh, how earnest and fateful and all-important it was at
the time! Her waywardness; her ever-varying moods, now bright, now
dark, like a meadow under drifting clouds; her causeless angers; her
sudden repentances, each in turn filling me with joy or sorrow: these
were my life, and all the rest was but emptiness. But ever deep down
behind all my other feelings was a vague disquiet, a fear that I was
like the man who set forth to lay hands upon the rainbow, and that the
real Edie Calder, however near she might seem, was in truth for ever
beyond my reach.

For she was so hard to understand, or, at least, she was so for a
dull-witted country lad like me. For if I would talk to her of my real
prospects, and how by taking in the whole of Corriemuir we might earn a
hundred good pounds over the extra rent, and maybe be able to build out
the parlour at West Inch, so as to make it fine for her when we married,
she would pout her lips and droop her eyes, as though she scarce had
patience to listen to me. But if I would let her build up dreams about
what I might become, how I might find a paper which proved me to be the
true heir of the laird, or how, without joining the army, which she
would by no means hear of, I showed myself to be a great warrior until
my name was in all folks' mouths, then she would be as blithe as the
May. I would keep up the play as well as I could, but soon some
luckless word would show that I was only plain Jock Calder of West Inch,
and out would come her lip again in scorn of me. So we moved on, she in
the air and I on the ground; and if the rift had not come in one way, it
must in another.

It was after Christmas, but the winter had been mild, with just frost
enough to make it safe walking over the peat bogs. One fresh morning
Edie had been out early, and she came back to breakfast with a fleck of
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