Between the Dark and the Daylight by William Dean Howells
page 11 of 181 (06%)
page 11 of 181 (06%)
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painted iron surface of the garden movable. The translucence had a
pathos for his intelligence which the pensive tilt of her head enhanced. She stopped toying with the cards, and looked at the addresses on them. "What strange things names are!" she said, as if musing on the fact, with a sigh which he thought disproportioned to the depth of her remark. "They seem rather irrelevant at times," he admitted, with a smile. "They're mere tags, labels, which can be attached to one as well as another; they seem to belong equally to anybody." "That is what I always say to myself," she agreed, with more interest than he found explicable. "But finally," he returned, "they're all that's left us, if they're left themselves. They are the only signs to the few who knew us that we ever existed. They stand for our characters, our personality, our mind, our soul." She said, "That is very true," and then she suddenly gave him the cards. "Do you know these people?" "I? I thought they were friends of yours," he replied, astonished. [Illustration: A LIVELY MATRON, OF AS YOUTHFUL A TEMPERAMENT AS THE LIVELY GIRLS SHE BROUGHT IN HER TRAIN, BURST UPON THEM] "That is what papa thinks," Miss Gerald said, and while she sat dreamily absent, a rustle of skirts and a flutter of voices pierced from the |
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