The Secret City by Sir Hugh Walpole
page 52 of 459 (11%)
page 52 of 459 (11%)
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another.
"Please come whenever you want to see your friend," she said, "we shall be delighted." "Thank you," he answered simply, and went. When he had gone she said to me: "I like that man. One could trust him." "Yes, one could," I answered her. IX I must return now to young Henry Bohun. I would like to arouse your sympathy for him, but sympathy's a dangerous medicine for the young, who are only too ready, so far as their self-confidence goes, to take a mile if you give them an inch. But with Bohun it was simply a case of re-delivering, piece by piece, the mile that he had had no possible right to imagine in his possession, and at the end of his relinquishment he was as naked and impoverished a soul as any life with youth and health on its side can manage to sustain. He was very miserable during these first weeks, and then it must be remembered that Petrograd was, at this time, no very happy place for anybody. Bohun was not a coward--he would have stood the worst things in France without flinching--but he was neither old enough nor young enough to face without a tremor the queer world of nerves and unfulfilled expectation in which he found |
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