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The Secret City by Sir Hugh Walpole
page 52 of 459 (11%)
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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