Hazard of New Fortunes, a — Volume 1 by William Dean Howells
page 60 of 115 (52%)
page 60 of 115 (52%)
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bones too much. I wish we didn't always recognize the facts as we do.
Sometimes I should like to blink them. I should like to think I was devouter than I am, and younger and prettier." "Better not; you couldn't keep it up. Honesty is the best policy even in such things." "No; I don't like it, Basil. I should rather wait till the last day for some of my motives to come to the top. I know they're always mixed, but do let me give them the benefit of a doubt sometimes." "Well, well, have it your own way, my dear. But I prefer not to lay up so many disagreeable surprises for myself at that time." She would not consent. "I know I am a good deal younger than I was. I feel quite in the mood of that morning when we walked down Broadway on our wedding journey. Don't you?" "Oh yes. But I know I'm not younger; I'm only prettier." She laughed for pleasure in his joke, and also for unconscious joy in the gay New York weather, in which there was no 'arriere pensee' of the east wind. They had crossed Broadway, and were walking over to Washington Square, in the region of which they now hoped to place themselves. The 'primo tenore' statue of Garibaldi had already taken possession of the place in the name of Latin progress, and they met Italian faces, French faces, Spanish faces, as they strolled over the asphalt walks, under the thinning shadows of the autumn-stricken sycamores. They met the familiar picturesque raggedness of Southern Europe with the old kindly illusion that somehow it existed for their appreciation, and that it found |
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